Secret to Soviet spies' legendary drinking prowess finally revealed - perhaps

The makers of hangover cure KGB claim it is one of the last secrets to come out of the former Soviet Union - and say no one should be surprised the Russians succeeded in finding such a remedy ahead of western companies.

'Russia put the first man into space,' said American Kurt Stahl, a partner in the St Petersburg consortium selling the cure. 'They developed nuclear submarines. At their military and medical academies, Russia had a lot of great men who developed a lot of great products.'

According to its makers, KGB was developed at St Petersburg Military Medical Academy during the cold war and carried by every secret agent to enable them to remain sober while their foreign counterparts became drunk. The story goes that it disappeared after the cold war ended, then quietly reappeared in pharmacies around St Petersburg in the mid-1990s, where it was picked up by the wife of a consortium member looking for a cure for her husband's sore head.

Mr Stahl said: 'It was being widely used in a corner of Russia but the people who bought it didn't realise there was no equivalent in the outside world.'

When Mr Stahl brought it to Hong Kong - where a deal was struck with B&B Natural to distribute it - company executives told him they had heard rumours of Russian cold war agents having a secret weapon to avoid hangovers.

'They told me there was a rumour among the Chinese agents that Russian spies used some technological weapon to out-drink everyone,' Mr Stahl said.