George Palmer

Hi, Sarah.

It's a great pleasure to be here.

No, I wasn't actually born in Cairo.

I was born in a tent in a desert.

In Egypt.

Right.

Well, I'm probably a couple of hundred kilometres away, literally in the desert, at a place called Mwaiskar, which was then a major British military hospital, which had been set up actually...

In the First World War, a lot of Australian soldiers in the First World War were stationed there and it was the hospital where my parents came when I was ready to pop out into the world.

Well, Dad was still in the British Army at that stage.

He had risen to the rank of Major and

My mum was in the military intelligence section throughout the war and they met in Italy in the Italian campaign.

And then Dad was posted back to the Palestine campaign.

Mum came back to Egypt.

They married.

And when it was time for me to arrive, the only place that I could arrive was the British military hospital on the edge of the desert.

So I was literally born in a tent.

Look, she wasn't a super spy.

Actually, knowing my mum, she could well have been a femme fatale super spy.

What she said, though, was that she was in the intelligence gathering section because she spoke five languages fluently.

Well, her father spoke French to her.