Russia is a weird place – not that anyone can blame them. It is an insane landmass, brutalised by geography and tempered by vodka. Imagine a nation with weather gods so cold that even Napoleon’s army, upon conquering the abandoned Moscow, were like, ‘Nah mate, this just isn’t worth it…’ 

Yesterday I found myself on the fringes of the internet watching one of their blokes attach four bungee ropes to inch-long bar-like piercings in his arse cheeks – squat at the top of a dodgy, rusted, structurally unsound relic of the USSR – and voluntarily throw himself off into the abyss. 

Pretty...