Alky Ada and the Spooks!

I am currently reading Matthew Parris' autobiography. A good read with some really good insights into the human existence, his as much as others. In one part of his life, just after Cambridge, the MI6 or 5 brigade thought he would make a good spook. He thought so too, but came to realise that he was not cut out for spying. The problem was they didn't. They offered him a job! Parris puts it brilliantly - "On reflection it struck me I was too unreliable to be a spy. I am not discreet, not self-effacing, not patient, not heterosexual and besides, there was, as Mrs.Thatcher would have put it and probably has, 'something not quite right about that boy'. It's a matter of relief that I had noticed my unsuitability for British intelligence. It's a matter of concern that British intelligence never did." And he goes on to say that if you ever thought British Intelligence was just like the books, all Oxbridge dons and closed door meetings, then it is "just like that".

I have heard some accounts of friends' friends passing through the hallowed halls of these spying types. Joining all the tales together and it does give the impression of a service to our country that is more wing and a prayer than anything else. So it comes as no surprise that MI5 may have mistakenly recruited Al Queda operatives as willing Muslim informants.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Home Affairs counter-terror sub-committee, said he was told six recruits were ejected after worries about their past. Questions are now being asked. Good, because if these six wonders were still operating what sort of fantasies would MI5 chiefs be living under? The mind boggles. An Arab once said to me, "You British, you can be such fools," and he meant it kindly, as if to urge remedial treatment in an alpine clinic.

As they say, this story has legs.