“Take Sochi,” he jabbed a finger at me in his local wine bar off Borough High Street, as he expounded on opportunities still waiting in the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics in southern Russia. “Not the construction of the major sports venues, or the airport or the train links which are all let to major Russian companies; but we are talking here of a town of 300,000 people that within a year or two is going to be teeming with 1 million inhabitants who need places to stay, restaurants, fast food, retail outlets for clothes and groceries, all sorts of shops and all sorts of services”.

For Barry, Moscow is the most exciting city. He has been there over 300 times “but you never get tired of it,” he says. After Moscow his favourite place to visit now that Russia is bereft of its former Soviet satellites, is Plios a hidden treasure in the Golden Ring. Ancient Plios, with 2514 inhabitants is 40 miles from Kostroma and about 90 miles from Suzdal, and is the smallest and perhaps the most picturesque town of the Russian Golden Ring, famous for breathtaking riverside vistas, tastefully restored Chekhov-era wooden dachas on the bank of the Volga River.

The highlight of Barry’s interaction with Russia was 1989, the year before the Soviet Union broke up.

“We staged a month-long extravaganza of British commerce in Moscow called The British are Coming. We rotated 16 different sector exhibitions in 4 weeks through the same hall in the International Trade Centre in Moscow. Over the month we brought 300 exhibitors and 3,000 British businessmen to meet 25,000 Soviet specialists.

“Thames TV from the UK took over a Russian TV station for a month and broadcast programmes and costume dramas dubbed into Russian. At that time dubbing meant one voice for all the characters, reading a translation in practically a monotone. All I’ll say is that ‘Minder’ (a British comedy-drama about the London criminal underworld.) did not come over well”.

You can feel the energy as he recounts chartering Concorde to fly Margaret Thatcher to Moscow, and British Caledonian charter flights for the delegations; of having the National Youth Theatre troupe led by a young Prince Edward performing on stage and the Duxford Colliery Brass Band parading on the street - you know he was in his element.

He has an angle for opportunities as well. With the an empty leg each way on his weekly charters and empty nights in the block-booked hotel as the exhibitions, and exhibitors rotated every weekend; he sent sales reps to London pubs selling Midnight in Moscow tours for £99. “We gave them a midnight tour of Red Square, a four-hour coach tour of Moscow the next day a traditional Russian banquet lunch and then flew them home. They had 24 hours in Moscow and the time of their life,” he chortles.

He would do it all again, he says. If only the “The British would get off their backsides.”

Barry Martin /John Bonar