The bidding had been intense. Both the BBC and Channel 4 had put up six-figure offers, which had then been topped by NBC slamming $1m on the table. But in the end it had been RT’s offer of a lifetime’s diplomatic immunity, along with a free weekend break at an exclusive Black Sea resort, that had secured the interview every broadcaster wanted.

A day after Vladimir Putin had announced it would be fine by him if the two men accused of the Salisbury poisonings chose to go on TV to give the version of events that had been agreed by the Russian security services, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov found a gap in their busy diaries to squeeze themselves into a small Moscow studio. There they were confronted by the most feared interviewer in global broadcasting, Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief.

Simonyan didn’t pull her punches. “You do look like the men in the pictures,” she began hesitantly. That’s because they were the men in the CCTV footage, both men replied. Were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov their real names, Simonyan continued. Absolutely. They weren’t entirely sure which of them was which but they were agreed that between them they were the men in question. And yes, they knew they looked a bit sheepish and guilty, but how would you feel about being fingered for a crime you thought you had got away with?

So what had the two men been doing in Salisbury? “Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town,” said Boshirov, who might have been Petrov but was almost certainly neither. “There’s the famous Salisbury cathedral, famous not only in Europe but in the whole world for its 123-metre spire and for its clock, one of the first created in the world.” Their command of Wikipedia was impressive. Salisbury also had a population of 40,302. A figure they had been keen on reducing by two.

Here’s how their weekend had gone. They were just two ordinary guys with a keen interest in sports nutrition who had taken advantage of a buy-one-get-one-free Aeroflot offer of a two-city break in London and Salisbury. After spending their first night in a boutique, anonymous hotel conveniently situated miles from any mainline station, they had managed to find the only Saturday train that hadn’t been cancelled.

But they just hadn’t been prepared for the intense cold of a Wiltshire spring after the blazing heat of a Moscow winter. “We couldn’t do it because there was muddy slush everywhere,” they said sadly. “The town was covered by this slush. We got wet, took the nearest train and came back to London.”

It was only after they had got back to London that they realised they had missed the famous cloisters and one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta. So they had got back on the train the following day and headed back to Salisbury to complete the tour. And what a glorious day it had been, taking in the cathedral’s spire and a chicken and bacon sandwich from Pret.

The second day hadn’t been altogether a success. First they had got a bit lost – they had knocked on a door that just happened to be Sergei Skripal’s – and then they’d had to cancel their Stonehenge visit.

Simonyan could barely contain her tears. This was one of the saddest stories she had ever heard. But worse was still to come. What really hurt Petrov and Boshirov the most was that they had been accused of carrying Nina Ricci perfume. “Isn’t it silly for decent lads to have women’s perfume?” Boshirov wept. “The customs are checking everything, they would have questions as to why men have women’s perfume in their luggage. We didn’t have it.”

Accusations of being GRU assassins they could live with. The suggestion that they might wear women’s perfume was just too much. If they had been carrying novichok they would have done so in a can of Lynx. Because they were proper Russian men. Fashionable guys with tight pants and biceps bulging under their sweaters, as Simonyan had kindly observed. But not girly boys. Anything but that.

Warming to their theme, the two men recounted other very manly expeditions they had made to Europe. They had been to Switzerland together and enjoyed themselves a great deal. Zurich was the largest city in Switzerland and had been permanently settled for 2,000 years. It was also a top place for sports nutrition.

The two men were now wrung out, so Simonyan brought the interview to a close. Putin smiled. It had gone even better than he had hoped. The perfect way to show the UK that he really didn’t give a toss.