It was another late-night radio show. Three guests trying not to sound lethargic. It's always the same at the BBC after 11pm. A mixture of wannabe MPs, pundits and "experts" arrive either from their home (where they've been half-asleep on the sofa) or from a binge (where they've been half-awake on a bar stool) to chat about the "top news stories".
Tony Saint was the show's big guest. Saint is the ex-immigration officer who has written a novel that draws on his experiences in the job. The Home Office took his book and its "tone" seriously, and although they didn't try to stop publication, made several demands of the publisher. Saint should make it clear in every interview that his book in no way reflects current immigration practices, the HO said. Saint duly obliged on Radio 5 Live by emphasising that he left the service, oh, way back at the beginning of this year.
Immigration officers, the Customs and Excise mob, car clampers and anyone at the Inland Revenue are people I generally want to be as far from as possible. They are not people with whom I want to discuss news and politics. But Saint was funny and bright. He was jaw-droppingly blunt about what his old job entailed; picking who to pluck from the queue at customs based on snap judgements and every kind of racial preconception; pretty much what we'd always suspected. His question to critics of the service was blunt, too: "How else except by gut instinct do you select who to stop and who to let enter a country?" Replace the words "gut instinct" with "prejudice" and you can see why the Home Office has butterflies at the thought of his novel, Refusal Shoes, becoming a bestseller this month.
Meanwhile, a friend's husband has just finished a one-year contract with the Home Office. He was a manager in a scheme set up to train workers to use new immigration computer software. For years, entrants refused at Heathrow could come back weeks later in a new disguise and try all over again. There was no way to cross-check details, photos or previous records. He described watching over their shoulders as officials questioned immigrants and tried to use the new systems at the same time. Farcical stuff.
"You wouldn't believe the ruses people try. No wonder the immigration guys get so jaded," he said. "You've got old men whitening their teeth, because the passport they've bought says they're 18!" Then there's the suntan lotion brigade, men and women whose passport photo shows an African or South American owner. If in fact they are from eastern Europe, they may try to disguise themselves using home perms and instant tan - a look about as convincingly Moorish as Laurence Olivier playing Othello. Young children can be "blacked up" too, as dark-skinned strangers pretend to be their parents.
"It's not to do with kidnapping," he said. "It's parents who are trying to send their kids to a better life."
I couldn't figure out how my friend's husband got such an important job at the Home Office when last year he'd been waiting tables in Covent Garden.
"Were you training as well? Studying? Working part-time in another government office?" The company hired for the training contract paid him around £40,000. He must have skills and qualifications coming out of his ears. The couple laughed.
"He blagged it, Lauren," said my friend. "I had done some work for the company as a trainer and told one of the employers that I knew someone who'd be perfect. He had a couple of weeks' training from me at home and that was it - he was in." Dealing with highly sensitive government material on immigration? Yup.
Getting into the UK may have become more difficult, but getting into the Home Office is still a case of being white with the gift of the gab.
