I spy a PR stunt!
Three budding Bonds win a tour of MI5 after Blue Peter contest ... but don’t our sleuths have proper work to do?
IT’S constantly battling to protect us from terrorism and the host of other major threats in the modern world.
So you might think MI5 would have more important things to worry about than running a competition for Blue Peter viewers to go to ‘spy school’.
But that is exactly what has happened, after three youngsters won a competition to visit MI5’s London HQ. The children even got to attend a meeting with the security service’s directorgeneral Andrew Parker.
Jamie, 13, Reuben, 13, and ten- year- old Finley were selected after a series of ‘difficult’ tests to show they are young spies in the making.
Codenamed Project Petra, the initiative was the first time cameras were allowed to film inside the MI5 building.
It comes at a time when the UK’s intelligence agencies are busier than ever before fighting threats from Al Qaeda, Islamic State and Russia.
And their ability to track foreign and home-grown terrorists and monitor their communications has been severely damaged due to the intelligence leaks by ex-US spy Edward Snowden. Some 5,700 children applied to the competition, making it one of the most popular in Blue Peter’s history.
The young candidates had to complete a series of challenges and impress a judging panel made up of children’s author Anthony Horowitz, TV presenter and journalist Sonali Shah and Professor Christopher Andrew, the Security Service’s official historian.
In last week’s episode, eight
‘We were making history’
finalists had to crack codes to establish the location of the ‘spy school’, which was set up in the offices of accountancy firm KPMG in Manchester.
And yesterday, the candidates were whittled down to the final three in a series of tests, including being quizzed on what they remembered from a walk around Manchester city centre to test their observational skills.
Their guided tour of the MI5 building, which took place last month, will be shown in the third and final episode next Thursday.
Finley, from Surrey, said: ‘When I first entered MI5 it was way cooler than I thought it would be and I got to see loads of things that no- one else will ever get to see.’
Jamie, from Glasgow, added that it ‘felt really cool because we were making history’ and Reuben, from North Yorkshire, said: ‘ Being there for the very first time cameras have been allowed inside MI5 was an awesome experience and I loved doing it.’
The Blue Peter stunt came as Britain’s intelligence agencies launched a fresh drive to recruit more gay, ethnic and disabled spies.
MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have teamed up with gay rights charity Stonewall and other equal opportunities groups in a bid to attract employees from different backgrounds.
An advert for the initiative, which was launched last year, said: ‘ Today’s spies come from every background modern Britain has on offer, a cultural and linguistic breadth that enables them to operate against every threat the UK faces.
‘Diversity is not a “nice to have”, it is essential for them to succeed.’