my work for the Russian secret service . by Bernard Hollowood , in an interview with Barry Normanton . I had been working at the council of industrial design , in Petty France , for about three months when it happened . one day my secretary announced that a foreign-looking gentleman wished to see me about a new plastic fabric he had invented . plastics , schmastics ! I said . tell him I &apos;m not &amp;hellip; . and at that moment Mr Rudi Smith announced himself and strode into the office . please , see , he said , holding up a square of shiny material , it do n&apos;t creasing , it do n&apos;t shrinking , it do n&apos;t ripping . I show . he tugged at the plastic which immediately and noiselessly split down the middle . Mr Smith laughed . ah , he said , I notice you having sense of humour . over lunch I got to know him better . we arranged to meet again in Toni &apos;s Caf&amp;eacute; off Bread Street . for recognition purposes I was to carry a small hammer in one hand , a tiny sickle in the other , and the password was to be Herbert Read . fifteen years ago I was pretty innocent . you will have to believe me when I tell you that my suspicions were not yet aroused . over coffee and pretzels we talked . I complimented him on the improvement in his English . it is nothing , he said . I perfected my speech in order to know you better . and then he launched into a long , exciting history of the birth of communism , giving credit punctiliously to the work in England of Marx and Engels , and touching briefly on such matters as dialectical materialism , the marginal utility of land , and Ernest Bevin . you too are for freedom , comrade , he said . I nodded my agreement . it is a new technique , evolved in the Kiev University faculty of psychological warfare . it is called brain-washing . what Mr Smith wanted me to do - and he was of course prepared to pay handsomely , in pounds , dollars , ration books , anything - was to deal him the details , plans and prototypes of the goods being collected together for the great Britain can make it exhibition . he seemed particularly interested in Wedgwood beakers , a Decca record-player and Cooper &apos;s Oxford marmalade . but if you think British industrial design is so hot , I said , why do n&apos;t you go ahead and copy it , like the Japanese ? that would be unethical , he said , shaking his head . besides we have n&apos;t the manpower available for such work . every month for two years we met , never of course at the same place twice . usually it was in the stand at a football match , in some billiards saloon or strip show . then we would repair , separately and by different routes , to his rooms on the eighth floor of the Sudbury Hotel in Chiswick , where he kept a small radio transmitter and all the other paraphernalia of his nefarious craft . to think , I said to him one day , that in a few moments these microfilmed working drawings of Mappin &apos;s improved percolator will be in Moscow ! alas , he said , the radius of transmission is small . the information will be picked up by our receiver in Reigate and from there smuggled out of the country by pigeon - first to Dinard , then to Ko&quot;ln , and from there by fast car to Moscow . the first break in our arrangement occurred after about eighteen months . he had been complaining about the slow rate at which I was feeding him the designs of British consumer goods . Moscow , he said , is furious . the second five-year plan is nearly up and all we have so far are the drawings for a new cut-glass decanter , an improved aluminium percolator , a trouser-press and a pen that writes wet with dry ink . the economy of the USSR is becoming lop-sided . beyond the Urals 350,000 men and women sit idle at the giant refrigerator plant waiting for plans . our department store is overflowing with pens . Stalin is livid . and then he told me about Russia &apos;s long-term struggle to wage economic war on the West . the bomb means military stalemate , he said . from now on we fight for economic supremacy in the world &apos;s markets , in the uncommitted nations . we Russians have no experience of consumer goods . you British are renowned as the world &apos;s shopkeepers , so - some people , I interrupted , would say that the Americans now have the lead in industrial design . American design is vulgar . no character . the British have dignity and taste and quality . please , comrade , will you not co-operate in the interests of world communism ? after this I visited Mr Smith very seldom , and if my memory serves me correctly , the only additional secrets I handed over were plans for a new-style cardigan , a patent cycle hub-cap , a beer-engine and some air-line cutlery . our m&amp;eacute;salliance slowly collapsed and until last week I had almost succeeded in forgetting all about it . what brought it back were the recorded impressions made by BBC reporters of their May day visit to Moscow . several of them visited the great department store , Gum , and were surprised to find that many of the goods on sale bore a striking resemblance to their counterparts in British shops - particularly the ball-point pens , cardigans and cut-glass decanters . needless to say , I was not surprised . Gwyn Thomas . growing up in Meadow Prospect . 6 reluctant trouper . most of us come through the years flanked by actors manqu&amp;eacute;s who placate the virus by getting hold of us from time to time , plastering paint on our faces and pushing us into any strong light that happens to be handy . my own Svengali was a teacher called Howie . over the whole period of my youth he kept after me . I do n&apos;t know exactly what kind of a dog Francis Thompson &apos;s hound of heaven was but if it was surer-footed than Howie I would be surprised . I am not sure what the hound wanted of Thompson but what Howie required of me was very simple . he wanted me to act . the relationship began in the primary School . I was about ten . Howie was a graduate who had failed to get a grammar School post . he was disgruntled , idle and apparently mad . he had a dark , dissolute face and his main tactic was to lean against a window ledge , looking at us from between his fingers , as if , for sanity &apos;s sake , he was rationing the sight of us . the school &apos;s curriculum was narrow and Howie , by the use of a silent inertia , brought it to the point of vanishing . he was convinced that we were all perfectly able to write , spell and figure , but that we were making a show of being misinformed to bring Howie a daily inch nearer his last seizure . at any show of idiocy he would shout : nature bleeds , but I did n&apos;t go to University to be a first-aid man . wound it some more . Howie was a Welsh nationalist . he swam like a duck around the tank of tears that is fixed firmly in any Celtic past . he wrote patriotic playlets . Howie had stared at me for a long time and he said I had the true truculent face of an embattled Celt , the sort of features that had looked down at the Saxons through the fogs of Snowdon , thickening them . I tried to explain to Howie that my scowl had nothing to do with my being Welsh or a bristling insurgent . I looked the way I did because I was in the first stage of nicotine poisoning , genuinely foxed in my attempts to find any hint of promise or logic in my environment , and subject to some terrible ventral upsets brought on by an unwise excess of lentils in the Meadow Prospect diet . but I played along with Howie . the play cycle he had written had two wheels : anguish and insurrection , and I was the boy who did the major pedalling . my first appearance in each case was as a captive and in this Howie left nothing to the fancy . I would walk on to the stage bowed down by chains . these were very real chains and they slowed me down considerably . most of the first act was taken up with me moving from the wings to the middle of the stage , clanking and enraged , to be told by some king or chieftain to get used to these trimmings because they were to be on me for life . I hated those chains . they had been left in the memorial Hall by some escapologist with a leaking memory who forgot not only the essential details of trickery that would have him sailing out of boxes and sacks , but also left his equipment behind him . in the memorial Hall he had had himself chained up and enclosed in a sealed barrel from which he proposed to make his escape in four minutes . the darkness must have put him off his stroke , or the chains were of too honest a brand . it took two coopers or hoopers to get him out . the play on which Howie expended the most labour was one which showed St David founding his cathedral on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire where a couple of his shin bones can still be seen . there was some talk of my taking the part of the saint and I worked my face into a whole new set of patterns to be able to present a picture of gentle innocence . I thought that this might possibly mark the opening of a new phase of more tractable and nourishing relationships with my fellows , and I could shed that iron top-coat . but Howie was dubious . the sight of me fettered and revolted had become one of his drawing cards , and it seemed to pull a satisfying bristle of excitement over the dry skin of his psyche . he enquired of a few local hagiologists as to whether St David had ever gone around in chains . they said no , all agreeing that David had been a fairly limber intriguer with a way of keeping on the right side of the gyves . then Howie had the idea of casting me as the sullen landlord , a pagan bully , who takes pleasure in saying that he would much prefer to put David over the cliff than let him have the land required for building the cathedral . but Howie could see no way of having this landlord appear in chains . the whole point of the play was that from the beginning to the end where he is struck down by a miracle this landlord is a puissant and overbearing man . but Howie worked me in after a lot of hard thinking . in the last scene the landowner is raising a club to St David and the saint just stands there smiling , not even lifting his pastoral crook . in the original version the landlord gets his quittance by some bit of intercession from on high . Howie had favoured a bolt but this would have been hard to stage , so he fell back on a stroke . then he got an even sharper idea . as the argument between the landowner and the saint is warming up a very fierce-looking felon , chained , is brought on by an escort of gaolers on his way to the gibbet . that was me , back to base . I ask my captors for a few minutes &apos; pause . the gibbet is a fair way from the gaol and the chains are heavy . I stare at the saint . I am trying to remember something . the memory gets through . years before , in the middle of some bit of delinquency I had been caught and led before the saint . he had fed me and advised me to go straight . he had even given me an address to which I could go and apply for some sort of honest work . but I had been making too much of a noise with my eating to catch the last part of the address , and in any case I was stupid with youth and flushed with confidence . the food had merely given me fresh strength to move more briskly towards some new bit of crookedness . 