Whilst the rest of the UK ponders whether David Shayler is a traitor or simply a self-serving fat tosser, The Sleaze has evidence that casts serious doubt on many of the renegade MI5 man’s claims. According to KGB defector Oleg Wytnuklov: “Shayler was only a minor clerk in your Security Service, without access to much of the material he claims to have seen. He dealt mainly with export licences. To be fair, he was very good at this job – he denied China and Cuba access to many vital technologies, including incontinence pants, certain rubber products and haemorrhoid ointments”. Blocking supplies of the last item to Cuba was particularly cruel blow to President Fidel Castro who suffers badly from painful bum grapes. Wytnuklov’s claims carry considerable weight as, throughout the 1960s and 1970s he was a top KGB operative, charged with penetrating British intelligence through the back entrance. He was forced to flee the Soviet Union in 1989 after being accused of trying to sell pornographic postcards, apparently involving Raisa Gorbachev and her bear trapper’s hat, to Boris Yeltsin. “It was all a misunderstanding”, he maintains. “I was merely showing him the kind of decadent filth the West was trying to corrupt our socialist paradise with”. Wearing a false nose and testicles, Wytnuklov successfully evaded his KGB colleagues and defected to Britain. Whilst he agrees with Shayler’s claim that the intelligence services keep files on many prominent public figures, he argues that this was not because they were considered security risks, but because they were actually working for the intelligence community. The ex-KGB man is especially scornful of Shayler’s claims that former Beatle John Lennon was considered a threat to security by the British authorities. “Nothing could be further from the truth! John Lennon was a very patriotic man – he and the Beatles did much undercover work for the British government during their foreign tours!” Wytnuklov asserts. “Why else do you think Harold Wilson gave them all OBEs? It was in recognition of John successfully obtaining the plans to a top secret Soviet trout-stretching factory whilst on tour in Berlin 1967”. Lennon apparently succeeded in slipping over the Wall and persuading an avid East German fan who had worked on the factory, to exchange the plans for several autographed nude photos of him and Paul and a signed copy of ‘Revolver’. Obtaining these plans gave Britain a vital edge in the trout export wars of the mid 1960s – enabling inspectors to spot the tell-tale stretch marks on oversize Russian trout, which in turn led to a UN export ban.

Wytnuklov does concede that the US authorities may have taken a different view of Lennon. “They were not aware of his activities on behalf of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Also, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, had a personal grudge against Lennon”, the former agent believes. The cross-dressing counter-espionage chief allegedly took exception to Lennon’s remark that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. “Goddamit!” He was heard to exclaim. “Our Lord Jesus was big enough for all twelve apostles!” Nevertheless, the communists remained very worried about the Fab Four’s intelligence activities. Indeed, Wytnuklov has sensationally claimed that Yoko Ono was actually a Red agent provocateur sent to destroy the group. “Before he met her John Lennon was a staunch Conservative”, he asserts. “After taking up with her he grew his hair long and changed the lyrics of his greatest song from ‘Voting Tory Forever’ to ‘Strawberry Fields’ – a piece of drug-addled gibberish!”. Wytnuklov has produced no evidence to back up this claim. According to the renegade Russian, Yoko Ono was also once involved in an unsuccessful attempt to seduce mild-mannered country singer John Denver. Unbeknownst to his fans, Denver was a highly successful CIA agent who, during a 1969 tour of China, secretly obtained Chairman Mao’s elusive inside leg measurement. Experts at the secret Los Alamos research institute were subsequently able to construct an accurate life-size model of the yellow despot’s trousers. This proved vital in the fight against communism and altered the course of the war in Vietnam. Whilst the CIA successfully deployed the low-key Denver against China, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service took a different approach, employing legendary hell-raiser Oliver Reed in its battles with Moscow. Reed frequently donned a false moustache to foray behind the iron curtain disguised as a peasant farm labourer. He would frequently visit remote rural bars and challenge unsuspecting Strategic Rocket Forces troops to drinking contests – which he inevitably won. Whilst the soldiers were in a drunken stupor Reed would interrogate them in order to gain vital intelligence about Russia’s ballistic missiles. On several occasions he rendered entire squadrons of Soviet MiGs inoperative by drinking their hydraulic fluid.

In 1972 Reed was eventually sent to Moscow to challenge then party leader Leonid Brezhnev to a drinking contest. However, before he could meet Brezhnev, he became drunk on cheap Russian vodka and was arrested for dancing on Lenin’s tomb whilst masturbating in rhythm to the Soviet national anthem. Reed was eventually exchanged by the Russians for a vacuum cleaner. “Household technology was still very primitive in Russia at this time”, Wytnuklov recalls. “We discovered many Western secrets from this vacuum cleaner”. Intelligence experts have cast doubt on the Russian’s claims, suggesting that there was no evidence of his ever having served in the KGB. Some have even suggested that he was actually a black-marketeer specialising in the export to the West of fake pornographic religious icons. Wytnuklov now makes his living running a popular telephone sex service in London. “I love England”, he told us. “You British, you seem so reserved – but in reality it is not just your upper lips that are stiff, eh?” He recently hit the headlines when he attempted to sell a national newspapers photos of former East German leader Erich Honeker having relations with a dolphin. They proved to be fakes. His name has been passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.