Recruitment headaches

From Reuters-

LONDON - The success of the James Bond movies has given the British Secret Intelligence Service a recruitment headache -- too many cranks want to join MI6.

"I think it gives people a false impression of what working for the organization is actually like," the head of MI6 recruitment -- named only as "Mark" -- told BBC Radio One's Newsbeat program on Monday.

"So it does tend to turn up quite a lot of thrill seekers and fantasists and we're really not interested in them."

As well as dismissing the notion that spying was a never-ending life of fast cars, fast women and shaken not stirred Martini cocktails, "Mark" was keen to demolish another myth surrounding MI6.

"We don't have a license to kill -- we don't carry Berettas -- that's simply not true."

The popularity of James Bond movies goes back to the mid-60's. So if MI6 is getting crank applicants, you may think it has been happening for sometime. I don't recall which of the three Frederick Forsyth books it was that featured the character Sir Nigel Irvine, but I seem to recall the character once saying there are 'old spies and bold spies but no old bold spies.' People who take movies or even mainline television dramas(Take for instance ER. Don't get me started on how unrealistic the portrayal of medicine is done on the show) as resembling real-life, are out of touch with reality.

Maybe MI6 should require applicants to read the works of John Le Carre first. Some have called George Smiley 'the anti-Bond'. That may make future MI6 applicants think twice.

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