Limited Intelligence

Our inside source in the UK's intelligence community - the mysterious 'Deep Stomach' - has made further worrying revelations as to the sanity of the country's senior intelligence analysts. Speaking from his exclusive South London drinking club, the 'Dog and Pickaxe' in Lewisham, he told us of the recent disturbing antics of the Defence Intelligence Staff's (DIS) top arms trade expert, Bill Christopher. "To be fair, he is obsessed with security," says the rotund mole. "He keeps his office door permanently locked. The only way in and out is through a large cat flap cut in the lower panels. It can only be opened by the magnetic device he wears on a collar around his neck." Whilst such conduct might simply be dismissed as eccentricity, it is Christopher's bizarre conviction that he is a master of disguise which is causing the most consternation in senior intelligence circles. "He recently spent an entire meeting with the Chief of Defence Intelligence and other senior Ministry of Defence (MoD) staff pretending to be a hat stand," sighs 'Deep Stomach'. "For an hour and a half he stood in the corner, with hats and coats draped over his out stretched arms, before finally leaping out five minutes from the end, shouting 'Hah, now I have you, you bunch of pesky cake stealing molluscs'. After which he walked out."

Bill Christopher's disguise fetish - which seems to be getting worse; he recently attended a bilateral conference with the CIA dressed as a Thanksgiving turkey, saying only 'gobble, gobble' - would be more understandable if he were a field agent. However, he has spent his career working exclusively behind a desk. "The closest he's ever been to field work was back in the early nineties, when he was sent on a fact-finding trip to the former Yugoslavia," says our source. "He was just meant to be visiting factories, looking at tanks. That sort of thing." However, the analyst seriously exceeded his brief. "For some reason, known only to himself, Bill decided to ride a moped into the Yugoslav Federal Parliament in Belgrade," recalls 'Deep Stomach'. "He proceeded to declare to the assembled politicians 'I am the god of hell fire!', before setting his top hat alight." Whilst no direct causal link was ever established, many DIS analysts suspect that in this incident lies the genesis of the Yugoslav civil war. Not surprisingly, the MoD has never allowed Christopher to undertake any similar expeditions. "We're dreading what he might do next," says 'Deep Stomach'. "Only last week he was standing in the registry pretending to be a filing cabinet - he kept trying to get young female clerks to stick Top Secret files down his pants."