Roast of Vladimir Putin Leaves Six Dead, Seven Missing

Written by Mike Richardson Bryan
Sunday, 14 December 2008
MOSCOW—The Friar's Club of Moscow celebrated its 75th anniversary on Friday with a roast of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "It was magnificent," said roastmaster Boris Bukolov. "The best comics in all of Russia were skewering Putin—poking fun at his baldness and his temper and his slight, womanish physique—and he was totally cool with it. I've never seen him laugh so hard." Unfortunately, the good times didn't last. "I first suspected something was wrong when shock comic Oleg Balk keeled over with a poison dart in his neck," said Bukolov. "That was suspicious enough, coming as it did so soon after Turnip Top the prop comic was killed by an exploding rubber chicken. But I knew there was trouble when Ukrainian funnyman Pavlo Boykos fell to his death from an open window even though the roast was being held in a windowless basement. Of course, that's when the polonium kicked in and everything went fuzzy. " It was Russia's deadliest roast since the 1937 roast of Joseph Stalin, which claimed two million lives.