One former MI5 officer once said: There's a bit of a spy in everyone'. In fact one of Britain's most infamous spies was a little old lady from Bexleyheath who was a KGB operative for four decades.

Now, with reality TV continuing to fascinate viewers, BBC is searching for eight wannabe James (Jane) Bonds for the latest unbelievable TV challenge. Could you be one of them? JEAN MAY reports...

This contest is not just for the boys with their fantasy toys from 007 films. SPY will not just be looking for white, middle-class and educated men who like their Martinis shaken-not-stirred to join in its training programme.

Experts will be looking for people of all ages and from all walks of life to test themselves to the limit.

The programme-makers insist they are looking to recruit eight ordinary people. They must agree to leave their old lives behind, say goodbye to their family and friends, and relocate to a new city assuming a whole new identity.

For two months recruits will undergo a comprehensive training programme which will push them to their psychological limits.

SPY training will consist of tests, missions and challenges based entirely on those used by MI5, MI6, and other international intelligence agencies. Recruits will be made to confront their worst fears and will learn to rely on nobody but themselves.

Overseeing the training will be real-life former MI5 and MI6 intelligence officers, psychologists, and practising industrial agents.

They will select, instruct, advise and continually assess recruits on how well, or badly, they're doing. Crucially, they will offer the recruits, and the viewer, access to a world which is notoriously secretive and lift the lid on what it really means to become a spy. Their own experiences as spies will inform the unique training programme, and they will be guiding the series from inception to conclusion.

The tests in SPY will not be carried out on actors or plants. This is a series that takes place in the real world. Recruits will have to convince, coerce and manipulate ordinary members of the public, as well as one another, in order to complete the training programme.

Hidden cameras will capture their success or failure. Pin-hole cameras, secret microphones and long-range lenses will record the action as it unfolds.

Though the tests and missions will be a crucial part of the training process, the recruits biggest challenge will be to completely reinvent themselves.

Their transformation will involve going entirely to ground and learning to live as a totally new person. They will erase all aspects of their former life and start afresh. They will be given a new bank account, a new address and perhaps a new husband, or wife.

They must successfully convince those around them that their new identities are for real.

The first test for potential recruits will be locating and completing the application form for the project.

As with the application process for MI5, recruitment for SPY will be clandestine.

If you think you have what it takes, start by logging onto www.codenamespy.co.uk, or call 020 7241 9302 and, be warned, all is not as it seems.

CASE STUDY...The Grandma Bolshevik of Bexleyheath

In 1999 Mellita Norwood, an 87-year-old grandmother, was exposed as being the longest-serving Soviet spy in Britain.

When she was recruited by the Soviet Intelligence Service aged 25, Mrs. Norwood had been working for five years in the head office of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London.

At this time the BNFMRA was involved in the top secret business of developing Britain's nuclear deterrent.

As the personal assistant to the Associations' Director, Mrs Norwood had access to highly sensitive documents each day. This unremarkable, but highly efficient spy would pass those secrets to Moscow via clandestine meetings with Russian agents.

It was not until 1992 when former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin defected that the full extent of Mrs Norwood's covert actions came to light. The documents he brought with him to the west revealed that throughout the Cold War this unassuming woman was considered by the KGB to be one of their most useful agents in the UK.

CASE STUDY...The Surburban Spy

Michael John Smith led an unremarkable life as an electronics engineer.

A member of his local tennis club in Kingston upon Thames, and regular reader of the Daily Telegraph, Mr Smith's only notable characteristic was his strong patriotic belief in Great Britain. So nondescript was he, he was described as a "total nerd".

Within Mr Smith's English, middle-class persona, there was no hint of the ardent ideological communist, who in May 1975 had been recruited by the KGB.

Operating under the codename BORG, in July 1976 he gained security clearance to work as a test engineer at Thorn-EMI Defence Electronics, gaining unparalleled access to Britain's top-secret project to build the UK's first free fall nuclear bomb.

So good was Mr Smith's information on one of Britain's most classified nuclear secrets that the KGB themselves ran Mr Smith through psychological tests to determine whether or not he was a plant by British Intelligence.

In 1978 his communist past finally caught up with him. His carefully cultivated image of British normality was shattered when MI5 informed Thorn-EMI Defence Electronics of evidence of pro-communist sympathies.

He was immediately removed from the project. However, this was far from the end of Mr Smith's espionage activities. Amazingly, in December 1985 he gained employment with the GEC Hirst Research Centre in London. When he was finally arrested in 1992 he was found to have information on missile systems and military radar technology stored in a Sainsbury's carrier bag in the boot of his Datsun.