KGB agents tried and failed to recruit David Cameron when he was a young student, the Prime Minister told his Russian hosts yesterday. On a visit to Moscow, he joked that he apparently failed to pass the "interview" during the bizarre incident on a gap-year trip to the Black Sea coast in 1985.
When told of the incident, President Dmitry Medvedev said that Mr Cameron would have made a "very good KGB agent".
Mr Cameron described the apparent approach during a speech to students at the Moscow State university. "I first came to Russia as a student on my gap year between school and university in 1985," he said. "I took the Trans-Siberian railway from Nakhodka to Moscow and went on to the Black Sea coast.
"There, two Russians, speaking perfect English, turned up on a beach mostly used by foreigners."
He continued: "They took me out to lunch and dinner and asked me about life in England and what I thought about England."
A naive Mr Cameron apparently did not immediately realise what had happened at the resort of Yalta until returning to Britain. He is understood to have been travelling with a friend, Anthony Griffith. The Prime Minister said: "When I got back I told my tutor at university and he asked me whether it was an interview. If it was, it seems I didn't get the job."
The anecdote was met with an uncomfortable reaction among the Russian students in the auditorium.
But later, when asked about the incident, President Medvedev and other senior Russian figures laughed it off.
"David would have been a very good KGB agent, but in this case he would never have become a Prime Minister of the UK," the Russian President said at a press conference in the Kremlin. | Never would have happened, we didn't do it and you can't prove it. |
There have long been rumours that Left-wing politicians, including the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, were groomed by the KGB. Those comrades principled leftists, spies? I'm shocked, shocked! Actually, it's quite possible they didn't realize it if they were being groomed. |
However, it is unusual for a Right-wing politician to admit any links to the Soviets. |