FRENCH spymasters are hanging their heads in shame after a team of undercover agents proved no match for a couple of wary Bulgarian peasants.

In an exploit worthy of Inspector Clouseau, five officers on a training mission for the elite action service commando of the DGSE — the French equivalent of MI6 — came across the brothers Slavi and Vasko Tsonev watching over their alfalfa crop near the border with Romania.

Two of the officers had been parachuted into Romania and had travelled 25 miles to their rendezvous near the village of Koilvotsi. Their fake target was three other French officers who had entered Bulgaria using false passports.

The Tsonev brothers, carrying wooden boards, and their escort, a retired police officer with a 1950s Makarov