Asylum seekers are subject to an initial screening interview with the Home Office and then an exhaustive “substantive interview” lasting several hours, during which their claims are probed.

Home Office decisions to reject an asylum applicant can be challenged, and potentially overturned, in the courts.

“There is no check-up to find out if the person is a gay,” Tanisa told our undercover reporter.

“The main thing is what you say. You just have to tell them that ‘I am a gay and it is my reality’.

“There are a lot of organisations here where there are people like you who are not gay but are applying for the visa. You are not alone,” she reassured him.

She went on to explain how the deception would work.

“The approach we will take is this: I will fully prepare you for the interview by compiling a comprehensive package for you, including photographs of you at clubs, various other pieces of supporting evidence, an organisational letter, and additional letters of support, so that you are completely ready when I send you in.”

Tanisa, who said she had spent more than 17 years helping bring fake claims, explained that photographs taken of our reporter at LGBT events and the tickets he would buy for them would serve as evidence as part of his application.

“I will give you a letter from someone along with which we will take a few photographs and that person will write that they have engaged in physical sex with you,” she added.

Tanisa’s service came at a price – £2,500 – with a warning that the cost would go up in the unlikely event that our reporter’s claim was refused by the Home Office and it went to appeal through the courts.

A successful application would be worth the work involved, she explained.

“You can live here and work and you are also eligible to claim benefits.”

But if his asylum claim was successful, what would that mean for his wife back in Pakistan, our reporter asked, if he had already told the Home Office he was gay?

“If you call her here, then we will apply for her asylum as well,” Tanisa replied.

“Once she’s here, we can make her a lesbian.”