WHEN Denis Matsuev, one of Russia’s best-known pianists, turned 30 recently his friends wanted to give him a party he would never forget. Instead of ordering cake and champagne, they arranged for him to be arrested.

As part of a carefully planned practical joke, Matsuev was met at a Moscow railway station by real armed police, placed in their van and threatened with torture. “I was so scared I nearly passed out,” he said.

But instead of taking him to prison, the police delivered Matsuev to his friends, who had put a piano on the back of a lorry so that he could play while driving around the city under police escort.

Matsuev, who claims to have enjoyed his £15,000 birthday treat, was a victim of the latest trend among Russia’s rich and powerful. Apparently bored with everyday excess, they are paying thousands of pounds for ever more elaborate pranks organised by a company that promises to cater for the most bizarre sense of humour.

Wealthy Russians in search of amusement have used police to plant drugs in the cars of loved ones, watching as the unsuspecting dupes are arrested and taken to jail.

One Moscow businessman was detained after a kilogram of “heroin” was found in his Mercedes. He was locked up in a cell for several hours with actors posing as criminals and questioned by an investigator who threatened him with a 15-year jail sentence.

The escapade cost his friends £50,000 and included a stunt in which the businessman was tricked into believing at one point that he would receive an award from President Vladimir Putin.

One popular choice is to invite friends to a party at an isolated country dacha on Moscow’s outskirts. After a while the host vanishes, the phone lines are cut and the guests are locked in from the outside. For an extra fee an actor posing as an axe-wielding maniac can break in.

“Our clients are people with money, influence and taste,” said Sergei Knyazev, whose company sets up the hoaxes. Knyazev was inspired by The Game, a Hollywood film in which Michael Douglas plays a businessman whose brother pays a firm to spice up his regimented life with dramatic events.

The latest addition to Knyazev’s catalogue of options, which has yet to be ordered, is called Robinson Crusoe. For £20,000 a group of up to five friends are invited on to a yacht and shipwrecked on an island with no food or shelter.

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