Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin drank so much on US visit was found outside the White House in his underpants hailing a cab to get a pizza.

The following night he was mistaken for an intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents.

‘I’ll use this red phone here to order a pizza’

The drunken antics of Yeltsin, who died two years ago aged 76, are revealed in former US president Bill Clinton’s forthcoming memoirs. The 707-page book is the result of 70 taped interviews with Mr Clinton by Pulitzer prize-winning author Taylor Branch. Clinton, who is no stranger to scandal, does not expand on his ‘improper sexual relationship’ with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.




Surviving a call for impeachment over the affair in 1998, he once told Branch – his former flatmate in the 1970s – he ‘just cracked’ under the pressure.

Out next week, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President, also details an ‘explosive’ two-hour row between Mr Clinton and Al Gore who lost the 2000 election to George W Bush.

Mr Gore said the president’s ‘scandalous’ behaviour had cost him the presidency, according to passages from the book published yesterday in USA Today.

Mr Clinton, 63, said Mr Yeltsin’s 1995 trip almost ended in an ‘international incident’ when he tried to flag down a cab in Pennsylvania Avenue to buy a pizza.