I have Rustaveli's national epic of Georgia, in a Soviet-era edition. But I didn't buy it - it was given to me by a Russian whose fondest memories are of Khvanchkara and Kindzmarauli, and toasts by tamadas, and "Georgian Nights." There is something unusual about this, the Georgian national epic. Care to try to guess?

""Tiger's" rather than "leopard's" skin is how the Rustaveli title should be rendered.

If you want to drag Shakespeare into this (and who doesn't?) and offer him a walk-on part, then you might go so far as to emend the second part of Robert Greene's cutting phrase and use it to translate the second part of Rustaveli's title: "wrapped in a tiger's hide."

But I don't want to be critical, corrosively or otherwise, on this occasion.

Instead, I wish to thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring the Republic of Georgia and its fine products and tourist-destination possibilities to the attention of the English-speaking world. The producers of the desert-island disque  "Chansons de la Georgie" ("ne pei, krasavitsa, pro mne...")* thank you. The Wine-Makers Association of Georgia thanks you. The Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Tbilisi thanks you. The Fondation Bagration thanks you. The Committee to Elect Salome Zourabachvili thanks you. The heirs and assigns of Paul Chavchavadze thank you.

A tamada's toast, a toast now, brat'ya, to....well, let's all, at least this once, hail Mary.

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*A Pushkin poem beautifully translated into French by Vladimir Nabokov decades ago, and ending, if memory agrees to serve, "ces chansons de la Georgie/Leur amertume me rappelle/Une autre rive, une autre vie."

Oh, and by the way Jane Austen's The Three Sisters ends up in Russian with the same unarticled title as the Chekhov play.

Didi madloba. Garmajos!

Talking of tiger skins, would you like to sin?

Chris - I know what you mean, but I'm not happy about the the.

Remember that really funny film "Clerks" (pronounced clurrrks, like Americans do, rather than clarks, as we do)?

Well anyway, they weren't articled clerks, were they? And all the better for it.