JAMES Bond? Utter tosh. Life in the intelligence services is nothing like 007 makes it out to be.

Thankfully Dame Stella Rimington, former director general of MI5 (who was interviewed by Jessica Fellowes) was on hand to set the record straight and give us the true facts... well, the few vague details that she could reveal that is.

The author, who was the first female DG of MI5 and also the first to be named publicly, spoke about her latest novel, The Geneva Trap, and how the characters and events were inspired by her time in the service.

“I never thought I would write a biography,” she told the audience at the Arts Centre.

“When I retired I had lots of letters from publishers saying that I must have an interesting life to write about and they would love to publish it and I sent back some rather snooty responses saying I couldn’t write about it as it was all far too secret.”

But after giving talks to women’s groups about balancing the roles of work and motherhood, the head of one publishing house (who was in the audience) pointed out that she had spoken about her time in the service and hadn’t revealed any secrets – and so surely she must be able to write a book in the same vain.

Among the topics that came up from the audience’s questions during the hour long event was a certain ‘dodgy dossier’ released by Alistair Campbell concerning Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

“It is my background opinion that it is wrong to put raw intelligence in the public domain, and that’s what the dodgy dossier did,” said Stella.

“What you believe today may not be the case tomorrow because of extra information that comes in.

“I think the release of this dossier came from the determination to put the information in the public domain to explain the policy the Government has decided on.”

The topic of James Bond also reared it’s head and Stella spoke about how it was a bit of a joke amongst the intelligence service and nobody took it too seriously.

And in case you were wondering, no British intelligence agent has a licence to kill. I think we need to have a word with Bond.