If you’ve grown up on the Bond franchise then you’ll have certain expectations about the glamour of spycraft: killing baddies, bedding assassins, and driving fancy vehicles… well, that’s not happening with Australia’s spy agency ASIO, according to spy-turned-comedian David Callen.
“Your car is probably going to be a Toyota Corolla with a baby seat in the back,” he explains in the latest Who Doesn’t Love Politics? podcast, lovingly brought to you by GOAT and to which you should totally subscribe. “It’s not going to be a Lotus Esprit Turbo what converts into a submarine. See, you tend to get remembered by people when you drive a car like that.”
Australian spies don’t even get cool back projections.
Callan, thankfully, had no such expectations when he got into the espionage game.
“I didn’t want to be a spy. I kind of stumbled into it. I wanted a job with flextime so I could do theatre at night, and I was in Canberra trying to join the public service, and they went ‘well, there’s these guys called ASIO…” and I went ‘yeah, whatever, I don’t care what the acronym is,” and next thing I know…”
Spies don’t even get superhuman levels of hot, hot action, although… “I did have an affair with someone from the CIA, and it was not the nicest relationship I was in. She was a freakin’ psycho, I’ll tell you right now.”
You can hear more sexy, expectation-shattering revelations, potentially in breach of national security and international detente – and an interview with journalist Jenna Price about why she reckons that White Ribbon is cooked – at GOAT’s Who Doesn’t Love Politics? podcast right this minute with your hosts and ear-friends Michelle Stephenson and Andrew P Street. And why not rate and subscribe while you’re at it, huh?