This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

This is one of those crazy things that can happen to undercover journalists engaging in a spot of subterfuge.

Two Sunday Times investigative reporters, Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake, set out to discover whether it was possible to purchase a Bulgarian baby.

But their advert was spotted by a Bulgarian TV station, Nova, and its reporter then stung the stingers, so to speak.

The result is the six-minute segment above aired by Nova, and now available here on YouTube in which Bulgarian reporter, Veronika Dimitrova, plays them along while they are covertly filming her.

Both sides eventually confessed, and towards the end of the segment Nova shows an email from Blake saying: "We are very amused by this - it hasn't ever happened to us before!

"We have found lots of women in Bulgaria offered to sell their babies or act as surrogates for cash. How about you?

"We are also looking at Romania, Georgia and Ukraine and other countries."

I'm sure this episode has nothing to do with gossip sweeping the Sunday Times that the Insight department is to be wound up.

Over the years, going back at least until the mid-1980s, there have been rumours about the demise of Insight. It always survives, however.