Red Letter Puzzle. In the year of the Moscow Olympics, the BBC is offering the first television course in Russian for beginners.
Magnus Magnusson looks at the decline in the learning of Russian and the pleasures and pains of acquiring it. Why is the Russian alphabet so different? Is it as difficult as it looks? 250 million Russians don't think so, and Magnus Magnusson grills a few sporting masterminds in an attempt to solve the Red Letter Puzzle, with The Rt Hon Sir Harold Wilson, Sir Charles Johnston, Michael Frayn, Dr Terence Armstrong, Jim Fox, Stan Greenberg, Maria Hartman, Stuart Storey
Series producer TERRY DOYLE Producer PETER DUNKLEY
(The Russian language course begins next Monday on BBC2 at 10.20 pm)