Borat invited to visit Kazakhstan

ALARMED by the antics of a fictional TV reporter who portrays their country as a nation of horse urine-drinking misogynists, Kazakh authorities have invited the comedian who plays the character to come and see the truth for himself.

Rakhat Aliyev, Kazakh first deputy foreign minister and a powerful son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, asked comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to visit the vast, oil-rich steppe nation and meet normal human beings rather than the larger-than-life lunatics shown by Mr Cohen’s TV reporter Borat.

“His trip could yield a lot of discoveries — that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on,” Mr Aliyev told a local news agency.