I Wish I Was A Spy…

How many of you know a spy? None right? Well we didn’t either until we found out about our mate Neil McDonald’s albeit brief stint as a spy. A fucking Spy. How cool is that? A spy. Like James Bond. Kind of. I wish I was a spy. Instead I just write these things and superimpose my mates heads onto Bond’s body… So we obviously had to interview him about it…

I wish I was a spy…

So, how did you get the job as a spy?

It was an advert on a job site. It didn’t say much about it, other than it’d involve lots of driving, and sitting still for hours on end. Two of my favourite activities. The interview was at Glasgow airport. It was some ex-army freak doing it, and I got the job because I don’t look like an ex-army freak, or a cop. The guy told me that. Then they flew me to Bristol two days later, for a week’s training.

They explained that the job would be spying on people or businesses making big fradulent insurance claims, but it turned out to be people claiming sick pay or whatever. Just normal people. Which was why I left.

Do they make you watch Bond films in the training?

Not Bond films, I guess they assumed we’d all have seen them. We watched films made by people sitting up trees or in the back of vans. Films about people digging holes, jogging and changing car tyres. We got a crash-course advanced driving thing from some cop, which was pretty rad, and a huge tab in the hotel we were staying at. The training was fun.

Were you licenced to kill?

Never got that. I left before I could sit the killing exam, sadly.

Did you get a special watch that could support your own body weight or cut through glass?

Some people probably had that. Amongst lots of cool stuff I had a wee video camera that’s lens was a shirt button. Like on Watchdog or something. It was for when you’d have to follow somebody around the shops or whatever, after a car chase. That was probably the coolest thing. You can see it in the photo.

Why the fuck did people think Roger Moore was good as Bond? He was rubbish…

I have no idea. That guy’s a dick. He wouldn’t last five minutes in the back of a van with me.

What did your day to day activities as a spy involve?

Well, as an example, after my first day doing the job I got back home to Glasgow- from Rochadale- at about 11pm. You’d never know where you were going to be until the night before, and I had an email from them telling me to be in Fraserburgh- which is a five hour drive away- at 7am. A couple of beers and a coffee later and I was driving up to Aberdeenshire to meet my boss, who’d flown up. I yawned and he asked if I was “some kind of a lazy cunt? I don’t like lazy cunts”. I jumped in the back of my van and he drove me to some wee street. He got out, locked the van and walked off to his own car. They do that so that anybody watching thinks the van is empty. The boss hides around the corner so that if the person jumps in their car, two of us can follow them. Although I never did, I’d fuck off in the other direction while the boss followed them. Even if the person drove 100 miles and got a hotel for the night, you’d be expected to go and get the same hotel, and get up before them and shit. We had cards with a number on them that we had to phone if we needed a hotel, and somebody in the company would sort it out. You were also supposed to carry smart clothes with you too, in case the ’subject’ went to a nightclub and had a dance. Fuck being caught standing on your own filming some bloke in a nightclub…

Anyway, if the person so much as opened their front door you’d have to film it on a handheld HD camera, radio this event to the boss, and write it all down. It was always the best when they’d go straight back into their house, or obviously have a limp or whatever. On the one occassion I followed the guy, he went to a supermarket and bought milk. I’ll never know if that was conclusive proof he was faking an injury or not.

Sitting around in a car all day waiting for someone to accidently go jogging while claiming incapacity benefit must be kind of boring, how did you while away the hours sat in a van watching a council flat?

It was in the back of a very small van, with blacked out windows. Only the bosses got to sit in actual cars. So reading, mostly. That and wanking, chainsmoking, eating, phoning my friends on the phone they gave me, admiring my shoes, imagining what I’d look like with different haircuts, attempting press ups, thinking about how best to quit, and seeing how far I could stick my bellend into the spout of one of those big Volvic bottles to avoid pissing all over myself.

Why did you jack it in?

It’s fucked up, spying on normal people. Which wasn’t what I thought I’d be doing. It’s also mind-bendingly boring, and takes up almost all of your time. I was in Glasgow when I told my boss I quit, and still had to drive the van back to Blackburn. Immediately. Bastards. I’d still recommend it though, the training was a laugh and you get a card that you can use in most garages for anything except lottery tickets. Hence all the eating, smoking and wanking I was able to do.

Spies are always up to their necks in fanny, even low rate british tv show Spooks got to look at the lovely Keeley Hawes. Did your success rate with the lasses shoot through the roof when they found out you were a spy?

I didn’t even have time, it was either working or sleeping. Unless you know any lasses who like getting shagged in a pile of fag-ends and porn in the back of a Citreon Berlingo, then don’t expect any fanny. Actually, you lot probably do know lasses like that.