MI5 boss Stella lusts for life of Octopussy

The first female head of MI5, Stella Rimington, who inspired the producers of the James Bond films to cast Judi Dench as M, has revealed that she had rather more glamorous aspirations than might be expected. She would like to have been a Bond girl.
 
Rimington, the first British security chief to be openly identified and photographed, ran MI5 between 1992 to 1996 and is now a thriller writer. She was taking questions at a literary festival in Devon when she made her admission.
 
Asked which Bond villain she would have liked to play, Rimington, now 76, replied: "I would rather be Octopussy."
 
Octopussy (above) was a circus owner and jewel smuggler who lived on a floating palace in India with a harem of female assassins, and was played by Swedish model Maude Adams in the 1983 film of the same name.
 
It is a startling admission from Rimington, whose appearance prompted the press to nickname her the "housewife superspy" during her time in charge of the security services.
 
She lamented the coverage she was given in her role as head of MI5 and recalled that when she appeared in the papers the pictures were "always of me unloading my shopping on a Saturday morning, wearing a Barbour and jeans". She added that one headline that stuck with her was: "Why do British women in public life look so much worse than the French?"
 
Since retiring in 1996, Rimington has written six novels featuring female agent Liz Carlisle.

She shared one more secret with the audience at the Way With Words literary festival - she cannot stand the BBC1 show Spooks.

"I know everybody loves it, but it's nothing like the real thing," she said. "I've stopped watching it because it annoyed me so much. I gather it's coming back for another series - much to my horror." ·