This is Yekatarina Tikonova, (and friend), an ‘accomplished rock’n’roll dancer’. How this is accomplished is presumably that she can boogie-woogie like there’s no tomorrow. She has in fact won prizes for her boogie and her woogie. And she’s worth 1.3 billion quid. Not rubles, but your English pounds. That’s a lot of dancing.

The secret of this massive fortune though lies not with her career, but her ‘other name’. Yekaterina Putin. As in ‘Vlad’.

Her ‘spouse’ (true status unknown) is the son of a Putin henchman, who happens to be the main shareholder in Bank Rossiya. That’s a bank, presumably. And the positions held by Yekatarina and main man, Kirill, are the usual Russian thing that they head up various organisations that acquire loads of state funding after bidding against no-one else and surprisingly winning.

There has been no indication of illegal money acquisition by Yekatarina or Kirill, but they seemed to have amassed a vast fortune nonetheless. In their early 30s, having done not a lot more than dance around in a leotard. And be the daughter of a man who discloses an annual income of £77,000 for 2014.

Nice work if you can get it.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, another surfer in Australia has been attacked by a shark. That makes the score, this season: Great Whites 12, Humans (assuming Aussies…) 0. Though not all attacks are fatal. Only 2 so far. The most recent one, right at the top of New South Wales, and unsurprisingly on the coast, left the surfer able to get himself back to shore. Before collapsing in a pool of blood. He’ll be ok.

And much as a great part of me shouts out to these Aussies: DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING WATER; THERE’S FUCKING SHARKS OUT THERE!!!! another, slightly quieter, more considered part is impressed that these dudes (all surfers are ‘dudes’, they invented the word) and dudettes, will not be cowed by the potential presence of the world’s most accomplished killers, other than Robert Mugabe. They will not wimp out of the sport they love just for fear of death. Their freedom to challenge the forces of nature are so important that they accept the risks.

Because they’re brave. Because they’re Australians. Because they’re fucking stupid.

Happy Shark Day

A xxxx