INTELLIGENCE - IS IT OVERRATED?

SPYING 101 –  

Part 3: Intelligence 

Intelligence is the main currency of being both a spy and an actor.  

In this instance it generally means information, not being clever, which in the case of most spies/actors/directors I have had the ‘privilege’ to work with is just as well. 
Sometimes this information is in the public domain but more often it is not. So most of what the security forces deal with has nothing to do with what the everyday person would call intelligence.

As I say, being an actor is also often about intelligence – emotional intelligence, as the more up themselves in the trade would call it. One must gather information to create a believable scenario and character and convince onlookers that what they are watching is real and ‘true to life’. It can also mean digging out ‘nuances’ in the text that nobody knows or cares about and making them the pivotal idea for a production. If the audience is ‘intelligent’ in the same way that you are, they will love it. If they are not, or if have a soupcon of common sense, then they will hate it. 

Let me give you an example. 

I was recently asked (actually I begged for a role and even offered to work for free, but I had my own nefarious reasons for that – do you see what a tangled web we secret service operatives must weave in order to do whatever it is that we do?) to be in a new version of Othello. 

Not ever having actually read the play, I was surprised that my good friend Mr. Willoughby-Chase, (with whom I have only recently made things up after a few small misunderstandings involving the destruction of his flat in a fire and getting him shot in Edinburgh – though I would point out that neither of these things was in any way intentional) wanted to more research about the Moors in order to give the play a greater depth and make the murder scenes more believable than was usually the case.

 Having spent a couple of weeks driving around Haworth and Settle, and brushing up my Yorkshire accent, as well as reading a book about Ian Brady, I was very surprised that none of the rest of the cast seemed to have the same depth of knowledge, and their accents seemed more north African than Northern England. 

This is the problem with actors; they are often too arrogant to read briefs properly as they are from the South. Willoughby-Chase explained to me in no uncertain terms that my work was not really fitting in with everyone else’s efforts (though why that would be my problem I do not know – I think as usual I was used as a kind of Northern scapegoat), though as things turned out I had too many other commitments to appear in his rubbishy version of the play anyway – though I did notice in the reviews that Iago ‘had a whiff of Heathcliff and Othello had all of the nobility of Charlie Williams’, so my interpretation must have stuck, on some subliminal level. Other than that, the reviewer didn’t seem to like the production very much so I rather think the last laugh was with me. 

It is this kind of experience which makes me believe that I am cut out to be the perfect spy. Given that I am rather…idiosyncratic in my actions, it makes said actions hard to predict, and will often lead to confusion on behalf of any viewer of the resulting scenario. Or as Anna would have it – ‘given that you rarely have an effing clue what the buggering hell you’re on about, it’s effing impossible for anybody else to know what you’re bloody well up to…’, which I can’t help but feel is just a more impassioned way of saying exactly the same thing… 

Don't worry, dear Reader, I will go into this in more detail and give concrete examples elsewhere – you may wish to buy my books in order to learn the finer nuances of both acting and spying. The first volume (entitled Rant) will be available from Moth Publishing next year, at a very reasonable price...  People from the intelligent and non-intelligent communities alike will, I think, be enthralled. 

Then of course there is counter-intelligence, which is the spreading of (often false) information to mislead or entrap the opposition.  Anna has told me since reading this over my shoulder that most of the things I do are counter intelligent. LOL! Mind you, she’s a fine one to talk, given some of the revelations she has seen fit to share with me of late…and only then after I managed to get into her Facebook account. 

Readers of my books would not be surprised that they comprise a little of both intelligence and counter intelligence. As I have stated before, some details have been changed in order to stop me being arrested and/or getting a good kicking from the parties involved. 

Being involved with the intelligence services does mean that I am often privy to information which is withheld from the general public. Usually for reasons of security, more often for reasons of wishing to avoid embarrassment, or too many queries about the way tax dollars are spent. 

I have thought about using this information to my advantage. Not blackmail (though I am not above this, as readers of my biographies will know) but rather as a way of reassuring the public that those in the know, know little of any use, if you know what I mean… 

Perhaps I will start a website called MikiLeaks, putting such info into the public domain. Anna tells me that it sounds like a blog exploring the problems of living with double incontinence, but I quite like it myself. 

My books, of course, do exactly this, but in an entertaining and enterprising way. I do like to think that I could teach Julian Assange a thing or two about public relations. My only fear is that, living as I do in the remote provinces (i.e. the North) I do not know the address of the Ecuadorean Embassy, if such an institution were to still exist when I may have recourse to their services.