Just don't eat the sushi

So it turns out that it's bad for business to have an ex-KGB agent die a horrible radiation death shortly after meeting someone at your hotel.

Click here for a Washington Post article on the Millennium Mayfair hotel, the place where Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko was given a lethal dose of Polonium-210.

Bad for the hotel, bad for the neighbourhood, bad for Mr. Litvinenko. But good for me. Suddenly, there are four-star hotel rooms in the centre of London (Grosvenor Square) for just 90 pounds a night. I've paid that much for space at a backpackers' hostel in Earl's Court.

True, three staff members - and one teapot - tested positive for radiation months after the fact. But I'm not too worried. Having visited the trifecta of the worst Soviet nuclear disasters (Mayak, Chernobyl and the Polygon test site near Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan), I'm no ordinary radio-tourist.

I'm heading to London for a few days later this week, and I'm booking a suite.