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The former Director General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, has been in Liverpool this week for a special talk: How to be be a Spy.

The event forms part of RISE programme which celebrates inspirational women from around the world.

Part of the programme is dedicated to celebrating women who are ‘firsts’ - and Dame Stella was the first female Director General of MI5 and the first figure to be publicly named in her post.

It is said that Stella was the inspiration behind James Bond’s ‘M’ played by Judi Dench, however Stella’s real story is far more extraordinary than any film.

She gave the Liverpool audience an insight into her incredible life and spoke about how her almost unbelievable career started with her being a typist.

She also touched what it was like rising up in a male led working environment.

Merseyside was mentioned too, as Stella completed a degree in archive administration in 1958 from the University of Liverpool and as a child moved to live with her Grandmother in Wallasey during WWII and witnessed the bombing of Liverpool from across the Mersey.

Of course, How to be a Spy also saw Stella discuss her roles within the Security Service and her must-read Liz Carlyle crime thriller novels.

We went along to the event, in St George’s Hall, to find out exactly how to be a spy…

Here are Dame Stella Rimington’s five mains points:

One main way in which spies do their jobs is by intercepting communications. When Stella started in the job, it literally consisted of spies with a kettle and sewing needle steaming opening letters in the post office. However now she told us it’s primarily done on the Internet - where most communication is done nowadays.

Another duty of a spy is surveillance. This would usually consist of secretly following people physically on foot, or observing them from a nearby shop or restaurant. The aim would be to find out what the subject is doing, where they are going and who they are speaking to. Nowadays surveillance can be done in many other ways such as with mobile phones or drones.

Dame Stella told audiences that the best intelligence comes from human sources. Finding a person from inside a terrorist organisation and using them to tell all is most effective strategy. Human sources allow spies access to thoughts and feelings, something which other methods such as surveillance and intercepting communications do not.

Spies must be able to divulge information easily and keep their cool in embarrassing or tricky situations, Stella said. MI5 used to test if spies where up for the job by sending them into a pub under a false identity and asking them to get as much information from a random man in there as possible. Another MI5 worker would then enter the pub and blow up their cover story. They would be looking for how aspiring spies would react to being rumbled and whether they’d remember the information they were told.

Lastly, Stella said that spies must be able to be quick thinking and be able to take calculated risks in a matter of seconds.

The event formed part of RISE programme which celebrates inspirational women from around the world, for more information and tickets www.riseliverpool.co.u k.