Security service MI5 starts advertising for female staff in fitness centres

Domestic intelligence service MI5 has gone to the gym in an attempt to beef up the number of women who apply to be surveillance officers.

The Security Service will put up recruitment posters in women’s changing rooms at the Fitness First chain in a bid to cover a shortfall in women and minority ethnic officers.

The campaign, which features a black woman with an afro haircut, describes the typical female surveillance officer as one who “spends around £30 a month oncosmetics, enjoys curling up on the sofa to watch a good weepie”.

Last year MI5 admitted that the TV programme Spooks could be putting women off after a number of female characters died.

“We want to attract more females but the Spooks programme may be having a bad effect because of the way some of the female characters have been killed off,” an intelligence source said.

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MI5 aims to increase its workforce from 2,000 to 3,500 by 2008.