David Cameron thinks the KGB tried to recruit him - but apparently it was a 'gay pick-up'

David Cameron likes to recall the story of the time he was approached by what he thought were two KGB agents wanting to recruit him as a Cold War spy when he was just 19.

The future prime minister, then on a pre-university gap year in the 1980s, went travelling around the Soviet Union and after meeting a "great friend" in Moscow, went down to the beach resort of Yalta on the Black Sea.

These two Russians who spoke perfect English sort of turned up on the beach, which was mainly reserved for foreign tourists.

They took us out to dinner and interrogated us in a friendly way about life in England and what we thought and politics.

We were obviously very careful and guarded in what we said but later when I got to university my politics tutor said that was definitely an attempt.

• David Cameron

But that anecdote, first told on the BBC's Desert Island Discs in 2006, has been shot down quite spectacularly by a Russian security analyst.

In an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Wednesday, Gennady Sokolov explained that the "KGB agents" who approached Cameron and his friend were in fact "black marketeers" who also happened to fancy "a closer look at a couple of nice English boys".

Sokolov says he has spoken to several sources within the Russian security services as well as archives and says there is no evidence to suggest Cameron was a recruitment target.

In what is a frankly bizarre interview, the analyst also appears to suggest that Cameron's trip across the Soviet Union was funded by MI6 and that he fabricated the KGB story as a "wonderful propaganda move for the future prime minister of England".

Sokolov adds that a biographical book detailing this incident is being prepared for international publication.

More: Nick Clegg has been banned from entering Russia