Hero's welcome?

Russia's spies were whisked away from a Moscow airport

In the bad old days, homecoming spies could expect heroes' welcomes in Moscow, their faces on commemorative postage stamps and lifelong adulation.

But that, of course, was when they were fighting evil empires, rather than living the suburban American dream.

Today's returning spies seem to have done little hard work - or at least little work for the Russian state.

The glamorous Anna Chapman, for example, appears to have spent more time flogging private planes to Russian oligarchs.

But they have all been offered a Moscow flat and a $2,000 (£1,327) state pension - the sort of riches plenty of Muscovites can still only dream of.

The Russian press are treating the entire episode with a mixture of humour and disdain.

Our Man in Havana, James Wormold, passed off mundane details as secrets

One commenter observed: "It reminds me of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana where the spy convinces his Centre that a diagram of a vacuum cleaner is the blueprint for a new secret weapon."

The radio station Ekho Moskvy has announced a cartoon contest on the topic of the returning spies.

But there are plenty of Russians who say the spies "just weren't up to the job".

With the exception of the redheaded Anna Chapman, who will doubtless soon be offered a talk show and a column on a British tabloid, they do look like a dull lot compared to their Soviet forerunners - who were very good indeed at their jobs.

EAST-WEST PRISONER SWAPS1962: KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel freed by US in exchange for Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 spy plane shot down over the USSR in 19601964: Gordon Lonsdale, real name Konon Molody, member of the Portland spy ring, is returned to the USSR1969: UK frees Soviet agents Peter and Helen Kroger for Gerald Brooke, jailed for spying in USSR1981: Guenter Guillaume, agent for East Germany's Stasi, exchanged for Western agents1986: Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents swapped for KGB husband-and-wife spies Karl and Hana Koecher and two other agentsUS and Russia in airport spy swap Who is on the 'spy-swap' list?

The old Soviet-era spies tended to be a cheerful lot, full of joie de vivre - it is perhaps their capacity for jollity that made them successful.

Mikhail Lyubimov, who spied in London in the 1980s, once told me that former spies should form an international association aimed at promoting international understanding.

"With our experience, we are by far the best equipped to work towards bettering understandings between nations," he said, only semi-seriously.

A former colleague, who was kicked out of Japan for spying, went on to have a successful career writing books that opened Japanese culture to Russian readers.

Nevertheless, it cannot be eas