Wylde about….1983.

If you don’t recognise the chap in the photo, don’t worry - you won’t be the only one.

It’s Stanislav Petrov.

And he saved the world.

Really.

He was Russian, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Force and he is almost certainly the reason that you are reading this now.

Because in 1983 we came as close as we ever have to nuclear Armageddon. Much closer, it turns out, than even the Cuban Missile Crisis….

In the September of that year, Stanislav was the duty officer at the command centre for the Soviets’ brand new ‘Oko’ nuclear early-warning system just outside Moscow.

Lo and behold, that night the Oko system categorically reported first one and then a further four incoming  U.S. nuclear missiles.

Yikes.

Petrov’s order were to report any such incidents immediately, obvs. But something told him not to, and that this was much more likely a teething glitch with the new Oko system than it was Ronald Reagan launching all-out war.

He was, of course, proved right. But had he done the ‘right thing’ and followed orders, the chances are that the Soviets would have responded in kind and you and I would be dust.

At the time, of course, we were all blissfully unaware.

I was a 7 year old boy in Croydon, focused The A-Team, Roland Rat and my Dad’s Saturday morning bacon sandwiches.

You see, as a family, in 1983 we’d just ‘discovered’ pita bread. And, on a Saturday morning, Dad used to make bacon sandwiches with those perfectly pillowy pockets.

They were amazing.

So when Kiran debuted her pita on the market this week, those bacon sandwiches were all I could think about.

As a result, when my order arrives next week, I’ll be remaking ‘em - with Nick’s bacon, an embarrassing amount of Ed’s butter and a dollop of Keir’s tomato ketchup.

And I’ll be saying a big ‘spasiba’ to Stanislav while I’m at it.