Blind comic reveals how he went through MI5 recruitment process

The comedian applied for a job with the security service 20 years and got down to the last one per cent of hopefuls… even though he is blind.

But he didn’t get the job in the end, and when an outraged friend protested that it was unfair that he had been discriminated against because of his disability, McCausland fired back: ‘I don’t want to live in a country that would give me that job! Sometimes I think discrimination is perfectly acceptable thing…’

The comic shared his story on Radio 4’s Saturday Live this morning, explaining that he was ‘applying for all kinds of things’ when out of work in his early 20s.

At the time he was newly qualified in IT, but was starting to lose his eyesight because of an hereditary condition, which made it hard to find a job.

‘I ended up floating around, kicking about the place,’ he said. ‘It got to the point where I started applying for crazy stuff just for a laugh - so I applied to MI5. They need to recruit just like any else. They have a graduate scheme and they were looking for spies. So I put my application in

‘I don’t know if I am allowed to say this - I might have to kill you afterwards - but a spy isn’t a James Bond character, A spy is  somebody who runs agents, members of public with information. So you’ve got to go out and meet them in staked-out locations and  trade information, and that’s what they were looking for

‘I put the application in and before you know it I was down to the last 30 out of 3,000 before they came to their senses.’

When presenter Richard Coles asked if he was interviewed by M, McCausland replied: ‘I got interviewed by every letter of the alphabet I think!

‘I went through a lot of different stages from the psychometric  tests through to a full-day assessment where I had to sift through all this information  and identify the threat and have a meeting with the surveillance team. I did quite well.’

But eventually the service let him down gently, explaining that they couldn’t give him a job because his blindness may hamper his work.  ‘Basically if there had been a bomb it would have taken me a little bit too long to find out who had it,’ he explained.

Published: 6 Mar 2021