Double-O London

I've always wanted to be a spy. I'd be good at it because, as I understand it, to be effective you have to blend in, be unnoticeable, be in fact the 'grey man'. I do that very well. Every time I walk into a shop I am ignored, likewise at bars, where bar staff just look right through me and serve whoever else is there instead. I am invisible. And thirsty.

In December I met an ex-military man at a Christmas party here in London, and somehow we got around to talking spies. He told me that while in the army he had requested to join the spooks. 'They wouldn't take me,' he laughed. 'Told me I was too tall!' He was indeed over six-foot, and that proved my point: to be an effective intelligence officer in the field you can't be too distinctive.

MI6 - a large and easy target beside Vauxhall Bridge

Times have changed hugely in the intelligence community though. There was a time when the headquarters of MI5 and MI6 would have been kept very low profile, but now all you have to do is Google them and you get their full addresses, historical backgrounds, and all sorts of information the Russians would have had to employ an army of intelligence officers to gather in the days before the Internet.

Anyway, you can't miss MI6 beside Vauxhall Bridge. It's featured in James Bond films and architecturally can hardly be said to blend in. It's an enormous building, all sandstone and green glass, perfectly symmetrical and a large and easy target, as evinced by an RPG attack on it by the Real Irish Republican Army in September 2000. They couldn’t miss – and didn’t – though no injuries or deaths were reported.

MI5, the domestic secret service is in Thames House further down river on the other bank, but although its 1930 architecture is more in keeping with older London it too has featured in mainstream media, notably the eponymous Spooks TV series. I photographed it earlier today, and they no doubt

MI5 - As Seen on TV

caught me doing so on their CCTV cameras hanging off the building. I also noticed a 'technician' up a lighting pole directly opposite, working away at some wiring, while at street level the normally anonymous electrical cabinet was wide open exposing all sorts of internal components, one of which was clearly labelled 'CCTV'. I suspect he worked for the Russians. Or Trump.

Russian operatives disguised as telecommunications workers outside MI5 in London

As I left, a military helicopter flew overhead and I quickened my pace. Back on the tube I decided to put my invisibility to good use and practise my spying skills, to see if I could spot any terrorists. Having recently been educated by the Prince Philip School of Terrorist Identification I knew what to look for. The only problem was, based on Phil’s advice, there were at least fifteen of them in my carriage alone. I got off as quickly as I could.

Instead of alerting the authorities, who were probably following me by now anyway, I went to visit one of the many spy shops in London. This one is in Howland Street, and is called Spymaster. Personally if I ran a spy shop I'd have the entrance as an innocuous door with a brass plate that said something boring like Universal Exports, but no, Spymaster has a large and visible street presence. 

I walked in. I was tempted to say in a Russian accent, 'The roses are blooming early this year' just to see if they had a sense of humour, but the two geeks behind the counter were busy with a customer so I contented myself with a browse. 

As is typical of my blending-in skills they hardly noticed me, even while I was taking photos of their merchandise, which ranged from wearable clothing cameras and recording devices through to counter-surveillance equipment, stab-proof vests and even a demonstration bulletproof car door with bullet holes in the metal and window glass. Well, not holes actually because the armour plating effectively stopped any penetration. Take that Goldfinger.

Everything for the covert operative at Spymaster

I snuck out before they tried to sell me something. Anyway, if you just go on eBay or Amazon you can find all the covert equipment you would ever need, though if you want to maintain anonymity you’d have to order from an Internet café, use someone else’s credit card and get your items delivered to some random address, outside of which you’d have to hover waiting for the postie. Easier to go to Spymaster (who assure a ‘confidential’ service) or one of the others.

I have actually brushed shoulders with the security intelligence world. When I was aged ten I wrote off to Special Branch for career information, which they kindly sent. Later, in my early 20s I wrote to the New Zealand SIS enquiring about job opportunities, and they too responded, but said they only accepted applicants with law degrees. That put me off.

Some years later I was indeed interviewed by a spook, but only as part of a security clearance process for someone who was applying for a job there. I recall the man was certainly non-descript – definitely a grey man – and that he asked me silly questions like, ‘Has the applicant ever been a member of the communist party?’ and, ‘Had the applicant ever been on any protest marches?’ He failed to ask the more obvious, ‘Do you think the applicant is a Russian spy?’

More recently, around 2008, I was engaged on a communications project for the New Zealand Defence Forces, and had to work out of the same building as the Security Intelligence Service. Because I was exposed to this military environment I had to undergo a security clearance, so duly filled in all the forms and supplied evidence of my birth, address, non-communist status, etc.

Two months after I finished the project I received my clearance, to ‘Secret’ level.

But I could never qualify as a spy now anyway, having worked in television. Although that was only in New Zealand, the chances of being recognised during a covert operation are too great. So, not only can I not get any service in shops or bars, I can’t help reduce the terrorist threat either.

The closest I get to the spying world these days is that my sister-in-law lives near the government communications training headquarters. I can’t tell you where of course, because then I’d have to kill you.


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