I plump for a shot of "Rzhanaya (Glavspirttrest)" from the vodka menu. Camilla Maxatova, 19, a marketing student sporting thigh-high leather boots, has one suggestion: "Our instructor said she thinks it's some kind of PR campaign and our government paid him to choose our country to advertise it. Saying good things would have been boring, and wouldn't have got any attention."Others fail to see anything positive. Gaukhar Dikhanbayeva, director of marketing at the decidedly plush InterContinental Hotel, says: "What he is doing is unacceptable.

But this is one of the only places on earth where it doesn't exist."While Andrew Newman, head of entertainment at Channel 4, said they chose Kazakhstan at random, conspiracy theories are rife. There is an expression in Russia: 'Beat a Jew and you will save Russia'. You don't hear that here."Israel's ambassador to Kazakhstan, Ran Ichay, suddenly calls the rabbi on his mobile and says he wants to give me his opinion too: "If you want to look for anti-Semitism in the world it's not hard to find. "I heard that opposition leaders gave him money to start this show. My friends hate him." Yeshaya Cohen, the country's Chief Rabbi, is also upset with Baron Cohen, who, it must be said, is Jewish. "For us Jews it hurts twice because Kazakhstan people saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Europe during the Second World War.

Stalin sent the Jews here when he exiled them from Georgia in cattle trucks When they arrived they said they were lucky. Its aroma rises from the dish like equine halitosis.The following day, I am furnished with another guide, Gaini Amanzholova, 21, a law student, who unlike Rimma, has heard of Borat. The sausage is bearable, but the rest reminds me of the smell of my sister's pets. It is not until I've tried them that a fellow customer points to various parts of his body to indicate their provenance, including his thigh, neck and, worryingly, his armpit.It's time to brave the national dish, beshbarmak, a selection of horse meat and mutton on a bed of pasta. The first is wolf, the second is Kazakhs."That evening I take Rimma's recommendation and arrive at the Promised Land for dinner I opt for a selection of horse meat as a starter. As we gaze at the tiger on top of a monument marking the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, she states: "Kazakhstan is like a tiger of this region - rapid economic growth, political stability, social progress, ethnic and religious peace, accord and harmony."As we enter the city's museum filled with splendid tribal costumes - "We are famous for our diversity of nationalities, 130 of them" - Rimma announces: "As soon as we got independence we closed the nuclear testing sites." (Borat claims the ministry supplemented his film's budget by selling uranium to "some brown men".)After looking at a sheep stomach once used to store fat and butter, she declares: "There are two meat eaters in the world. Business class is full: Kazakhstan is fast emerging as the economic powerhouse of central Asia and a global player in the oil and gas industry.Standing in the centre of Almaty, the snow-capped Tian Shan mountains in the distance, Rimma is on message from the off.