Just before they take a break from the podcast for a couple of weeks, Ben and Laurence enthusiastically review Coraline and Star Trek, and bring us film news and gossip!

Sitting in state on the South Bank of the Thames, literally and figuratively watching over Government on the other side, the famous building at Vauxhall Cross is one of the most striking modern additions to the London skyline. The illuminated silhouette of a gigantic terraced pyramid, with its symmetrical twin towers blazing against the darkness beyond, has become a standard feature in 007 films and has seared itself onto the national consciousness as a mysterious symbol of espionage and intrigue. Sometimes it is easy to forget that 85, Albert Embankment is a workplace, an office for hundreds of men and women who wear suits and tap away on computers, just like the rest of the world.

Since 2006, the Secret Intelligence Service (more commonly known as MI6) has been openly recruiting staff online, so if you fancy entering the clandestine portals of its Headquarters and becoming James Bond, now is the time to apply. Open advertising on sites like Facebook, building on the 2005 launch of an official website, is intended to broaden and diversify SIS’s recruitment base.

The Head of Recruitment of SIS, known here only as John, is an engaging and articulate man, as you might expect from someone responsible for sourcing the personalities behind the imposing architecture at Vauxhall Cross – or, perhaps, from your friend’s patrician, successful and rather imposing father. He himself was ‘headhunted’ during his final year at Oxford, and has worked for the service ever since. “I was kicking around in my third year, not really sure what I wanted to do yet. And I was approached by someone and asked if I was interested in an interview.”

The days of this kind of tap on the shoulder at Oxford have been and gone. In today’s fraught employment climate, as students attempt to navigate a combination of sponsored company schmoozes, endless internship application forms and Daddy’s best contacts, everyone can apply.

“There are still people in Oxford, quietly asking students if they’ve thought of a career like this”, John revealed. “But nowadays, they will direct people to the website. A lot of people still apply from Oxford, and actually a lot of our successful applications do come from Oxford graduates. But having opened up the process, we have got a much broader base of applicants from different places and stages in their lives. Whilst we still welcome applicants from traditional subjects, like PPE, History and languages, now our recruits have studied a far wider range of subjects.”

It is easy to imagine a crusty old don in a green-tinged gown giving a Modern Languages student the wink over a glass of port during the 1980s, but the fact that some of them are still doing so behind their oak-panelled doors today is certainly food for thought, and demonstrates the lasting link between the University and the Service.

You can apply to SIS from the age of 21 upwards and they do recruit some people straight from University. “Some people have everything we need by then,” explained John. “Others are better suited to coming a few years later, after they’ve done another job and matured a bit.” But whatever age you are at the time of application, there are certain qualities you will need to possess order to make it through the rigorous selection process. “You definitely need a certain degree of intellectual horsepower. Our recruits are generally in the top 25-40% of their peer group. This is why we do stipulate a 2:2 or above as a requirement. As well as being intelligent, you will need to buy into the whole idea of government service and have a commitment to that, not into becoming wealthy. It’s not a job where you’re going to earn stacks of money or be in the limelight. You will need to have good judgement and decision-making skills as well as excellent interpersonal skills. It’s a very team-based job and you will need to have those kinds of personal abilities. We need people of integrity, who people will trust, because at the end of the day you will be out there recruiting and running agents.”

The long list of laudable personal qualities outlined (conjuring up, in my mind anyway, a twenty-five-year-old fusion of Pierce Brosnan and Adam Carter off Spooks) justifies the very long and rigorous process involved in recruiting officers, which can take over 6 months to complete.

The website http://www.sis.gov.uk gives a detailed explanation of the recruitment procedure, which includes an online application, followed by an online cognitive test. If you pass the online cognitive test and the application form sift, you will be invited to a first interview over the telephone. If you pass the first interview you will be invited to a second interview with an experienced operational officer and will be asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. It involves a day spent at the offices in London during which you will also be asked to complete some more cognitive tests and do a written exercise. A successful day will lead to a two day, non-residential assessment centre and a drugs test. If you are successful at the assessment centre, you will move to the final stage of recruitment, which is security clearance. Subject to this clearance and final references being received, you will get a formal offer of employment.

So what do the cherry-picked successful candidates do when they have survived the process? “Recruits go into 3 or 4 months of training when they join the organization,” John explains. “They can then expect a couple of years working in London. When you start you will be mentored by an experienced officer, so we don’t expect you to hit the ground running. Saying that, there is a lot of responsibility, and you will be expected to pick up speed quickly.”

Two people that did just this are James and Tanya, both operational officers who joined SIS soon after graduating. Despite the secret nature of their employment, the immediate impression the pair give is of overwhelming normality. Both disarmingly modest and, frankly, human, the one thing that seems to distinguish them from the majority of their peers is their belief in and enjoyment of their work, both concurring that “yes, the job is both immensely enjoyable and fundamentally worthwhile.”

The lifestyle of young recruits is something that many would worry about subscribing to, given that the job is so serious in nature that you can’t talk about your professional life with outsiders. When pressed about this, John was keen to refute the stereotype. “People coming into the Service have been really impressed by the quality of the people and the convivial environment,” he countered. “Whilst we wouldn’t want it to become an introspective organization, people do form very strong relationships with their colleagues. Of course you can’t be completely open about your job to outsiders, but it soon becomes second nature. People remain in touch with their university friends in just the same way as people in other professional environments.”

Touching on the issue of dealing with ‘outsiders’, operational officer James revealed a similar response: “Since I first joined, I have grown used to conveying the impression to friends that my job involves worthy but rather tedious bureaucracy in a Whitehall department. And there is nothing like tedious bureaucracy to ensure that any social conversation moves swiftly on. Do I wish that I could tell others about the reality of my job, one that is far removed from relentless paper-pushing? No, nor would I be well-suited to the role if I did.”

He doesn’t go so far as to say that his career is ideal. Clearly the age-old problems that have dogged centuries of fictional spies do sometimes take their toll upon their real-life counterparts. “Of course not, no career could ever be ideal. As with any office, it has its frustrations and its demands on your personal life, although far less so than I imagined before I joined – joining SIS doesn’t stop you having a ‘normal’ social life. I have never once looked back at the path I chose in 2000 with any regret, something that cannot be said for most of my university friends.”

Tanya too challenges the stereotypical view of the intelligence officer’s poor social life. “I made friends for life during my initial induction course and some of my peers attended my wedding last year. Having said that it is possible to continue with your old life, and I still regularly see friends that I have known since my school days. Whilst they don’t know what I do, they loved the opportunity to visit me during my overseas posting and meeting up for lunch or a drink after work is still an option. In fact, my work/life balance remains very similar to that during my year in the private sector.”

Whilst fiction has portrayed intelligence officers as combat-trained physical specimens complete with a license to kill, John clarified that this was “a bit of a fantasy. SIS is not a military organization. There are medical tests, but no physical fitness tests for potential recruits. For a small minority of postings in places where there is a potential threat, officers will be trained so they are capable of handling themselves in these areas for their own safety.” So in reality there are less of the rippling Rupert Penry-Jones look-alikes sprinting around the streets of London. What a pity.

A career with SIS can be a career for life, and the Service has very high retention rates, which must say something about the rewarding nature of the work. And the perks do sound appealing: the opportunity to travel, to learn new languages and, in James’ words, “though it sounds hyperbolic to say so, to save lives”.

Spy lifestyles are never going to quite match up to the glamorous world of 007, and you probably won’t find yourself parachuting onto the O2 Arena during your initial training period. There is, nonetheless, a well-trodden path from Oxford to Vauxhall Cross that you might want to think about looking into, starting on the website. Just don’t tell your housemates.

Charity in Oxford has always existed on a much smaller scale than elsewhere. It’s a world of high-rise fundraisers, themed club nights, and summer balls. Breaking into this world is just one option on the Oxford extra-curricular platter. Lucy Hartley decided to go one step further, with her Otra Vida festival.
Hartley and her boyfriend, Janek Seevaratnam set up the charity Yanapay Europe together as the European branch of Peruvian charity Aldea Yanapay. The charity is run by Yuri, a young hippie with a mature dream. They want to create a series of self-sustaining, eco-friendly projects, providing education and homes for impoverished Peruvian children. Each of the projects-so far two schools and a cultural centre-is funded by an attached business venture. They have a hostel, which also helps them attract more student volunteers, and a restaurant.
Yuri believe that everyone can, and should, do something to help promote social change. He wants to take these efforts, and channel them into a self-supporting project. The long term dream is to set up an orphanage, a mammoth task requiring over £20,000 in donations. This was just a dream; until Hartley steped in. Now, they’re trying to raise the funds by throwing a full-scale festival in the middle of Oxford.
The conception of Otra Vida seems remarkably haphazard. Seevaratnam became involved with the charity Aldea Yanapay whilst travelling in Peru. He kept in touch with Yuri when he began his degree, and continued to do his bit for charity by selling spray-painted t-shirts and sending the proceeds to Africa.
Unimpressed with Seevaratnam’s t-shirt venture, Yuri declared that he needed to do more: ‘He said ‘I want you and your girlfriend to come and help me and my girlfriend. Together we’re going to make this orphanage’. After a ‘bit of a chat’ Hartley and Seevaratnam were decided; together they would build an orphanage.
With plans to move to Peru after Oxford to get the project off the ground, the pair have committed themselves for the long-haul. But, rather than waiting until then to raise the twenty-thousand pounds needed to set up the orphanage, the couple started putting on open-mic nights to start to chip away at their target. Then came a brainwave; why not try to make the whole lot in one epic event? And Otra Vida was born.
On the day I’m supposed to meet her, Lucy is running late, dashing from an appointment with the bank manager who’s behind schedule and has, once again, messed up. Tickets are going on sale the next day and the project desperately needs the bank to sort itself out so that they have somewhere to deposit the cash from ticket sales.
She admits that organising the festival has become a full-time job. Endless meetings with the council, the security company, the events management, local residents fill her days. What keeps the project going is the endless drive and enthusiasm on the part of Hartley, and the small team helping her to pull the project off. It’s an epic task for four people to accomplish on their own, especially given as they all have full-time degrees and Seevaratnam is in Paris on his year abroad.
Their faith in the project comes apparent when we start talking about the figures. The scale of the project is beyond all other student charitable ventures I’ve come across. With tickets at only ten quid each, they want to sell four thousand in total. Tickets were supposed to go on sale some time ago, but hold-ups at the council over the use of South Parks have delayed it. They now have only one month to get their marketing campaign into gear and shift tickets.
I asked whether Hartley is confident that the festival would recoup the twenty-five odd thousand pounds it will cost to pull off. Without hesitation or deviation, the answer is ‘yes’. Given the challenges of selling four thousand tickets in one month, for an event that’s going to be held in the middle of finals, it’s easy to be sceptical. But her confidence is what makes the project so inspiring. She has such faith in its success that you can’t help but begin to believe it will work.
The project is driven the partnership between Hartley and Seevaratnam. Their faith in each other and commitment to the project as a couple seems to have given them the confidence to jump in the deep end. Across the channel in Paris and unable to get involved in the day to day organisation, Seevaratnam has handed the reins over to Lucy. His pride and admiration in the hard work that Lucy has put in is clear. ‘She’s better than Bob Geldof’ he tells me. It’s clear that they work really well as a team; he’s the laid-back free-spirit with dreadlocks with a big vision for the project and she’s got the knack for organisation and the eye for detail which will make the festival work.
The three music stages will play host to fresh new bands from around the UK; hopefully launching their careers will be Gentleman’s Dub Club, Foreign Beggars and The Molotovs, to name a few. A chill-out woodland acoustic area will set up in the trees, and the area will be scattered with performers, poetry and spoken word, food, fun and (fingers crossed) sunshine, all with a Latin theme. Combined with an afterparty featuring a DJ set by Foals and some of Oxford’s best DJs, the event has something for everyone.
Hartley is keen to impress that it isn’t just an event for Oxford University students. Uneasy about the extent to which the university is integrated into the wider Oxford community, she sees the event as an opportunity to promote social cohesion. Working closely with Oxford Community Centre, local schools and charities, it’s an event for everyone, not just students.
Profits from the sale of the festival programmes are going to the local children’s charity Helen and Douglas House, who will be involved in the day’s frivolities, performing and taking part in the workshops run in the kids’ zone. The kids’ zone will even make the festival family friendly. Handily, a friend of a friend knows a man with an ambition to set up a circus school, so he’s been roped in to run workshops for children.
Having seen what the charity is about and Hartley’s motivation behind it, a festival is the perfect choice; it’s the extension of their attitude to life. They want to create an event that is inclusive for everybody, with a fantastic atmosphere and a really good cause behind it. Rather than seeing it as an ‘event’, the couple see it as ‘having some friends round to listen to some really good music’… on a massive scale.
The enthusiasm and vision has convinced me. I only hope that others (four thousand of them) will be similarly swept away by the idea of Otra Vida and what it represents.

I meet Richard Schiff at the back of the Turf Tavern. He stood out most noticeably as the guy who wasn’t a Union member staring at Richard Schiff.
Schiff is most famous in Oxford for his role as Toby Ziegler, Director of Communications to Martin Sheen’s president in The West Wing. Following the finale of the show, he has since returned to the theatre, where he began his career as a director. He recently brought a one-man-show to the West End, and contributes to The Independent’s comment section, on events in American politics. He also actively supported Joe Biden, and later Obama, on the campaign trail.

As I arrive, Schiff and his entourage were leaving. I’m to join him for a walk to Magdalen dock and half a punt, before conducting an official interview following a Q&A and drinks at the Union. I got the impression that his minders didn’t want to share Schiff; it took some effort to squeeze past the bodyguard layer they’d formed around him, in order to chat. I ask why a one-man-show; ‘It was the greatest challenge available to me, so I took it’. The answer holds more and more significance as you get to know him.

Interestingly, I share something with Schiff; it turns out we both harbour (no pun intended) a deep distrust of boats. At least now I can say that my fear of water was conquered thanks to Toby Ziegler. He teases ‘this guy looks more terrified than me’. Whatever. The punt is jolly, if brief. We talk about how he hates LA, and loves his baby ducks Bristol and Potato-head. As the tide of the river turns against us, he saves the day with some expert padding. As I’m jettisoned to make room for a presumably jealous Union member, we promise to meet tonight.

Later, Schiff introduced himself to a packed chamber; ‘It’s a great honour to be here…I’ve been told by many, many people’. He opens with a short piece written on election night (read online at http://bit.ly/hJhch). For a second time, an enigmatic insight into how he thinks.

The Q&A is dominated by West Wing chat. He talks of working with Martin Sheen, speaking the next day. In his words, ‘If Jesus were around today, he’d go up to Martin Sheen, and say ‘that’s what I’m talking about”.
There are a few questions of note; someone asks whether he thinks the West Wing helped bring about the modern political situation. He’s confident it didn’t. ‘I wouldn’t dare claim that what we did on the West Wing was responsible for the election!’. Still, he laughs at the memory of supporters who, despite volunteering for Obama, would tell him ‘You’re the reason I’m doing this’. Someone asks if he thinks there’s a difference between an actor and a politician. ‘The joke is that you’re asking me about politics’. Schiff, as the joke might go, isn’t a politician, but he does play one on TV. He might speak emphatically of the Obama’s merits (I advise you turn to Youtube for examples), but while this is something more than just acting, it doesn’t make him a career politician.

Afterwards, I see Schiff outside the chambers, signing autographs and West Wing DVDs for fans. I wait inside the Union’s Gladstone room, home of free drinks and pretension. I catch sight of a few escorts from earlier, now with Corey Dixon as the object of their affections. As Schiff enters, a dozen hungry pairs of eyes turn in his direction.

A second, more informal Q&A takes place under a cloud of cigarette smoke outside. I think most are smoking just to keep up with Schiff; I’m only just managing to keep myself 3 fags ahead. Schiff mentions directing an episode of ‘In Treatment’. In Treatment, not as big in the UK, is a concept series, a dialogue between patient and therapist for 30 minutes. Characterization and detailed direction is everything; Schiff’s forté.

We’re dragged upstairs for a round of poker by some excitable committee members. Graciously deciding ‘not to take [their] money’, he abstains from playing. Based on his description of a vicious celebrity poker tournament he took part in, they should count themselves lucky. He watches one hand, giving advice, before using our interview as an excuse for some respite.
I’ve seen Schiff surrounded by hangers-on. I’ve seen him speak on his craft, on politics, on the political process. With everything he says, there’s been this hint of someone who knows, with a rare clarity, what he thinks and why he thinks it. The biggest motif is ‘Challenge’, and striving. This was what gave him respect for Obama’s strength, and brought him to his one-man-show. I ask what he has to say about being a good guy generally.

‘I think that listening is the greatest virtue you can have…and that means, not just listening when you’re in a neutral state, but listening when you’re impassioned’. He’s adamant that we have to work with our opposite numbers in debate to make progress; a dialectical approach.

Is Obama trying the same thing with his partially-Republican cabinet? Schiff might claim that politics is nothing like the West Wing, but he turns to Sheen’s president for comparison. ‘Our fictional president was someone who did not want to be challenged. And yet, he refused to put up a shield, to shrug people off; he had to listen. He responded emotionally, and angrily, but he listened. And I think Obama is setting himself up with a team called to do the same thing’.

How do you know so much about people? ‘One of the things I’d advise to these Oxford chaps, and I wish I’d talked about it tonight is this: every time I come to London, if I’m not at Speakers’ Corner on Sunday, I feel like I’ve missed something. I go there to watch behaviour. I learn more about the world from Speakers’ Corner than I do from every newspaper printed on a news stand’. So a leader doesn’t just have to listen to what people say, but the way they say it? ‘I’ve never been a big believer in words. I don’t think they tell the whole, or even a third of the story. What’s really happening is behind the eyes; that’s the motive. I spend my life [as an actor] analysing dialogue in order to figure out what’s going on, and I apply that to life; do not trust what people say.’
Hence the reluctance to play poker. ‘These guys ask me to play poker, and I’d nail every single one of them. I might lose by luck, but if I put my mind to it I could nail them. I’d know exactly what they’re bluffing, and when they have a good hand, because I can read behaviour. I was watching, and I was like ‘This guys got nothing, this guys got nothing, he’s got a jack’. You have to be careful how you use that; I don’t want to play cards, I don’t want to use it in that fashion’.

This brings us back to the value of his role as Toby on his role as an Obama supporter. ‘It’s embarrassing to go out there, and be like ‘Hi’. All these people show up, and I’m supposed to speak this wisdom. And by the way, my real politics is about 1800 miles left of Obama, so this is me acting like Toby, and doing the right thing’.

One question I had people telling me to ask Schiff in this interview was his reaction to the first 100 days of Obama. He doesn’t need to be prompted; ‘I don’t want to analyse every motion, every stroke of the pen. His actions are symbolically interesting, but seriously, leave the guy alone. 100 days? That’s like analysing a paragraph in the first novel of Chaucer. Give it some time’ (For a more developed commentary, see Schiff’s article at http://bit.ly/Dqo0B).
The concluding note of our conversation is the confirmation I didn’t need that Schiff is a man worth listening to. ‘A psychiatrist said that there’s a scale of challenge, and the ability to meet that challenge. If you’re below the ability to meet that challenge, that produces great stress. If you’re above the ability, that creates restlessness. And there’s that moment where the two meet, and that’s fluidity. Obama was below his ability to meet the challenge, and at some point during the campaign, he evened it up. And that’s fluidity.

‘For a minute that one man show was above my ability, and then it became level, and that’s euphoria. There’s nothing like it. You work and you work, and at some point you reach fluidity. All of a sudden you’re acting instinctively, and intellectually. That’s what it is; knowing you can respond. It’s knowing that best hand in a poker game. Some people climb Everest for their adrenaline, and that’s what I strive for’.

The poker finishes and everyone files out looking for Schiff. He definitely stands in a new light. Seeing him speak to these full-tooth-smiling individuals, you see something new about how he does things. The smile now seems a little disinterested, slightly curious; he’s watching them. He’s learning. Richard Schiff, the man who lives a life of character study. Without question, Schiff is a man of great intelligence; someone worth paying very close attention to, whatever he does.