Radio silence ... Daniel Craig as 007 in Casino Royale.
You just can't get the staff these days. Just ask the Football Association. Or MI6. Yes, even the Secret Intelligence Service is trawling around for the next generation of agents capable of unhooking an Agent Provocateur bra with one hand while defusing a nuclear bomb with the other. And far from keeping the whole thing hush hush, as you might expect of a secret organisation, MI6 is advertising for new recruits through Radio 1's news show Newsbeat.
That the Secret Intelligence Service should turn to Radio 1 for its next intake of "operational officers" seems implausible on a number of levels. If you've ever tuned into Newsbeat, you'll know that Radio 1 treats current affairs in the same way that Chris Moyles tackles a nice steak pie. It's all gone in a couple of bites. Complex stories are reduced down to one easily digestible line and then followed with a bit of shouty vox pop.
Newsbeat's choice of stories also hints at an audience more comfortable with Heat than the New Statesman. Yesterday's news rundown touched on the trial of pink balls in cricket and darts champion Andy Fordham's 10 stone weight loss. The rest of the schedule is no better. Last week I turned on Scott Mills' afternoon show just in time to hear a listener crush a can between her breasts live on national radio. It's a skill that might win her a role in the next James Bond instalment but I'm not sure it would help her infiltrate a terrorist network unnoticed.
If MI6 chiefs want to recruit young women, foreign language speakers and ethnic minorities, then they're barking up the wrong tree at Radio 1. According to the latest audience research, the average age of a Radio 1 listener at breakfast time is 32. Younger listeners tend to prefer commercial stations to the BBC's offering.
A quick look at Radio 1's news website should tell MI6 all it needs to know. Given the chance to pose any question about the secret service, one listener wondered "iz it more like spooks than james bond coz james is more like unbilevable", while another asked "How do you stop things 'slipping out' when you get drunk?" I rest my case.
