It’s got the whole school gripped – this weekly adventure from a schoolboy called Russell Davies

Cue forward 30 years. (You can imagine the whooshing sound the Tardis makes at this point if you like) Not much has changed. Except the audience, which has grown from a few schoolkids to the six million who tuned in to Doctor Who most Saturday nights, for the recent second series starring David Tennant and Billie Piper. Unless you’re from outer space you’ll know that the revival, after a 16 year hiatus, of the world’s longest-running sci-fi series was pretty much down to Davies, now one of Britain’s foremost television writers, who had been pestering the BBC to let him write a new series of Doctor Who for years It has been an unqualified critical and commercial hit. All he wants to do when he grows up is draw for Marvel Comics The next day, his comic strip is passed around at school Even the teachers read it. He’s a big kid, about 14 years old, and he’s utterly absorbed in what he’s doing. It’s a cartoon strip, three whole pages of it, intricately drawn, full of detail and life The kid loves cartoon superheroes: he loves Doctor Who He’s done the occasional Doctor Who cartoon, too.

“It is a disgrace that they can fight a lawyer just doing his job by bringing up totally unfounded charges and thereby attempt to wreck his career. The setting’s a room in a suburban home – a bedroom or a living room, take your pick There’s a kid hunched over a table scribbling. Picture this The year’s about 1977, the place is Swansea It is a quiet Sunday. The case, conducted via international courts, could take five years.Osborne may not have picked a fight with the Kremlin, but a fight he now has – and this unlikely opponent is determined to come out on top.BIOGRAPHYBORN 22 March 1951EDUCATION Law degree from University College London.CAREER1974: articled at Lovell White & King.1976: qualifies as a solicitor.1978: joins Wiggin & Co.1979: partner, Wiggin & Co.1984: managing partner.2001: senior partner.2003 to now: joins demerged firm Wiggin Osborne Fullerlove, becoming senior partner.2004 to now: managing director, GML.. But despite the overwhelming odds, that hasn’t happened so far. The vehicle is now majority owned by Khodorkovsky’s one-time right-hand man, the Russian businessman Leonid Nevzlin, who is also being pursued by the authorities and lives in exile in Israel.And despite his own problems with the authorities, Osborne is leading GML’s pursuit of over $50bn in damages from the Russian government under the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement aimed at encouraging open energy markets. They’re sure as hell not going to rock the boat in Russia and get cut out of the next [deal].”With Khodorkovsky in jail and other Menatep executives in jail, GML could have fallen by the wayside.

He is angry that other investors in Yukos have not protested publicly, something he puts down to fear of missing out on future lucrative flotations and deals. “Most of those are just institutional investors who know what they lose on one company they gain on the next one. Some critics claim the flotation amounted to money laundering by the Russian government.Osborne expects Yukos’s remaining assets – some refineries and other small oil production companies – to be seized by the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom. Yukos’s biggest business, YNK fetched $9.3bn, which analysts said was less than half its real market value.Rosneft then went to the markets to pay off the consortium of Western banks that had lent it the money to buy YNK.

Rosneft’s main asset is YNK, which Yukos was forced to sell last year to pay its tax bill. But Osborne rejects the idea that he deserved his fate: “Nobody has suggested he broke any laws when he put Yukos together I believe he obeyed the laws at the time. And whatever anyone has done in the past, they are entitled to a fair trial. He went through a show trial.”Osborne has harsh words for institutions and companies such as BP that bought shares in Rosneft, Russia’s state-controlled oil company, when it floated in London and Moscow in July.