THE assassination attempts and sports cars made famous by super-spy James Bond are "myths and misconceptions".
When asked at a dinner party about your job, official policy at his employer is to make the answer as boring as possible.
MI6, Britain's international intelligence agency, is targeting thousands of Scots undergraduates as possible recruits.
At
a central Edinburgh hotel, a senior Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer told The Scotsman that students north of the Border tend to have better language abilities, and lack the sense of entitlement to a career in the secret service common among their counterparts in Oxford and Cambridge, long the SIS's traditional talent sources.
"We're recruiting an elite group of people but their behaviour must not be elitist," he said. "We look for integrity. Officers deal with sensitive information, and the welfare of agents and the British government is in their hands."
The agency, whose existence was denied until 1992, has approached "top class" students across Scotland, and this week held an "inside event" to cherry-pick the most promising.
This was MI6's first recruitment drive in Scotland since it moved away from the policy of "tapping the shoulder" of Oxbridge students three years ago. White males still account for 60 per cent of recruits.
"We realised the old ways were not appropriate," the officer said. "We couldn't find the numbers of people we needed, and it was out of kilter with modern Britain."
The agency is on target to meet the government's demand that it expand its personnel by 20 per cent over the next 18 months.
The officer, who can only be named as John, said that SIS had e-mailed "thousands" of people in their final year at universities such as Edinburgh, St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen.
He admitted that while the process "caused some people to think, 'How did they get my e-mail address?'" about 450 responses indicated interest and 90 students attended the Edinburgh event.
Successful applicants will undergo a rigorous nine-month testing and vetting procedure. Salaries start at about £24,000.
John said the recession had caused some people to "call into question the ethics and morality of rival professions". Among recent SIS recruits are city workers who received bonuses of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The agency does not have any "permanent presence" in Scotland, but co-operates with other security services.
John, who is fluent in Arabic and Turkish, said he had spent half his 20-year career on postings in the Middle East and Mediterranean. While he admitted to "hairy" encounters on occasion, he said he and his family enjoyed living in five countries.
He added that the British military presence in Afghanistan has encouraged applications. "The whole counter-terrorism angle has been a draw. People are patriotic even if they may not be banging on the table. Events in Afghanistan may be disturbing to them, but they understand, they want to see it through."
