A Bit of a Stretch E-Book

Chris Atkins

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 516

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'Shocking, scathing, entertaining.' Guardian 'Incredibly compelling.' The Times 'Heart-breaking.' Sunday Times Where can a tin of tuna buy you clean clothes? Where is it easier to get 'spice' than paracetamol? Where does self-harm barely raise an eyebrow? Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Service. Like most people, documentary-maker Chris Atkins didn't spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years. His new home would be HMP Wandsworth, one of the largest and most dysfunctional prisons in Europe. With a cast of characters ranging from wily drug dealers to senior officials bent on endless reform, this powerful memoir uncovers the horrifying reality behind the locked gates. Filled with dark humour and shocking stories, A Bit of a Stretch reveals why our creaking prison system is sorely costing us all - and why you should care.

Leseprobe

A Bit of a Stretch

‘If you thought you knew how bad British prisons are, you haven’t read this book... It’s an inside story to make you weep at the incompetence, stupidity and viciousness of the current system.’

Guardian

‘An entertaining memoir, but also an indictment of our creaking, underfunded prison system.’

The Times

‘Heartbreaking and hilarious.’

Christie Watson – bestselling author of

The Language of Kindness

‘Powerful and highly readable.’

Peter Dawson – Director of the

Prison Reform Trust and former prison governor

‘An important, urgent and entertaining memoir. It made me laugh, cry my eyes out and think hard, not only about forgiveness, but about love and life in general. An essential read.’

Sathnam Sanghera – bestselling author of The Boy with the Topknot

‘Shocking, funny and very moving.’

Mark Thomas – comedian

About the Author

Chris Atkins is a BAFTA-nominated filmmaker. His documentaries Taking Liberties and Starsuckers were critically acclaimed and made front-page news. He has also worked extensively with Dispatches for Channel 4 and BBC Panorama. Following his release from prison, he is now back in north London, filming documentaries and writing.

A Bit of a Stretch

The Diaries of a Prisoner

Chris Atkins

Published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2020 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

This paperback edition published in 2020.

Copyright © Chris Atkins, 2020

The moral right of Chris Atkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 017 0

E-book ISBN: 978 1 83895 016 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To Nazia, the best friend anyone could ever have. And for Kit, obviously.

Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter 1: Trauma and Toothpaste

Chapter 2: Lockdowns and Love Actually

Chapter 3: Showers and Slips

Chapter 4: Goodfellas and Goldilocks

Chapter 5: Biohazard and Back Rubs

Chapter 6: Suicide and Sellotape

Chapter 7: Spinsters and Spiceheads

Chapter 8: Murder and Mutiny

Chapter 9: Courtrooms and Cheeseburgers

Chapter 10: Despair and Dancing Queen

Chapter 11: Paedophiles and Prizes

Epilogue

Prisoner Stories

References

Acknowledgements

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Most ex-jailbirds want to quickly forget their time behind bars. But I didn’t have that option. Just over a year after my release, the hardback of A Bit of a Stretch was published in February 2020. Sudesh Amman, released from prison for terrorism offences a few weeks earlier, had just gone on a murderous jihadist rampage in south London. There was an understandable public outcry at how the system had completely failed to address his extremist behaviour.1 I was suddenly in demand as a prison expert and did a dizzying round of TV news appearances and press interviews. I argued that the barbaric conditions inside modern jails were an ideal recruiting agent for Islamic extremism and criminal gangs – and that many rehabilitation programmes do more harm than good.

A few weeks later, covid-19 ground the world to a halt. I assumed this would dampen interest in prisons, but it was quite the reverse. I was bombarded with questions about how to survive extended isolation, so I started tweeting tips about the importance of routine, breaking up the day into manageable chunks, and timing your bowel movements for the greater good. I was bemused to see celebrities directly comparing the lockdown to prison, with Ellen DeGeneres opining from her Hollywood mansion: ‘This is like being in jail… Mostly because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone in here is gay.’

But on a far more serious level, covid-19 also detonated a lethal new phase in the UK’s prison crisis. Already stretched to breaking point, British jails were tipped into a deadly paralysis. I was already in contact with several serving prisoners, as I was making a podcast series about prison life. As the covid noose tightened, dozens more inmates and their families contacted me with terrifying accounts. The knee-jerk response from the prison authorities was to cancel all family visits, implement blanket lockdowns, and ban all independent scrutiny. A resident on my old wing in HMP Wandsworth revealed that social distancing was non-existent. ‘We’re still queuing for food exactly as before, everyone standing shoulder to shoulder. 200 guys are sharing just six shower heads with no partitions. We only have seconds to wash, all crammed into a tiny swamp.’

The foul conditions prevalent in British prisons provided an ideal breeding ground, and the virus quickly spread. In a desperate attempt to slow infections, all prisoners were placed in total isolation. Inmates were only allowed out of their cells for twenty minutes per day, and for some, this was reduced to only a few times a week. Anyone showing symptoms was locked up for 14 days straight, and not even allowed out for phone calls or showers.

As I found during my own experiences in prison, the official response to a problem often backfired. An inmate at HMP Highpoint told me about the unintended consequences of this brutal quarantining. ‘Word quickly spread that sick residents were trapped in their cells for up to a month. This led to genuinely and visibly sick inmates pretending to be fit as a fiddle. It was like something out of Monty Python. At roll check, these poor bastards would stagger up to their doorway as white as sheets, pouring in sweat, and claiming to be just fine.’

One prisoner at HMP Ford was hospitalised following a heart attack, but soon recovered and returned to the prison. He had tested negative for covid-19, but under prison rules he was thrust into a quarantine cell with a heavily symptomatic prisoner, even though he was desperately high-risk.

As the crisis ramped up across the country, the Ministry of Justice was lauding the low transmission rates inside prisons and publicly claiming that the system was coping admirably. There was even a spate of tasteless TikTok videos of prison officers dancing in exercise yards, despite being overlooked by hundreds of desperate inmates who hadn’t been outside for weeks. By early April the government was claiming that the total number of infected prisoners was just 88.2 The MoJ is notorious for peddling spurious prison statistics and the testimonies of my contacts inside were painting a very different story. One prisoner revealed that half his wing had become infected (approximately a hundred people) but none of them were tested. ‘There is zero contact with healthcare, the nurses and doctors all refused to come in. We can’t even get an aspirin.’

The MoJ line soon collapsed when Public Health England reported that the number of actual cases was at least 2,000 (in England and Wales), many times over the government estimate.3 The brutal lockdown measures were themselves causing extreme harm. Prison suicides shot up, with five people taking their own lives in just six days at the end of May.4

At the start of the pandemic the government sensibly promised to release up to 4,000 low risk prisoners a few weeks early on home curfew (in England and Wales), to create space for more effective quarantining.5 The Justice Secretary Robert Buckland also agreed to release 70 pregnant women, who were considered to be at high risk to the virus.6 With depressing predictability, the authorities completely bungled the entire process. At the time of writing (over three months into the crisis) only 175 of the 4,000 eligible prisoners have been released,7 and only 21 pregnant women.8 This is especially shameful when compared to other countries – even Iran has taken a more effective and humane approach. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (who had been detained on trumped-up spying charges) was given compassionate leave,9 along with thousands of other Iranian prisoners.10

There were unexpected upsides for the prison community. One lag remarked to me that he quite liked the start of the lockdown. ‘The worst thing about prison is watching the world turn without you. I hated seeing everyone having a great time out there while I was trapped in here. With the lockdown, there was a feeling that everyone was in the same boat, and for once, I wasn’t missing out on anything.’

In July 2020 the MoJ finally responded to the criticisms in my book: ‘These claims date back four years, since then improvements to staffing, mental health and rehabilitation have all been acknowledged by independent inspectors.’11 This laughable statement was made despite the total collapse of conditions over the previous four months, during which independent inspections had been banned. As I write, some prisons are slowly starting to allow very limited visits, but the mentally crippling lockdowns will continue for the foreseeable future.

Coronavirus also provided an unlikely boost for proponents of urgent prison reform. It lifted the lid on the appalling state of British prisons – a situation which has festered in the shadows for years. Campaigns for more humane conditions are always going to be an uphill battle, as there is traditionally little public sympathy for the plight of convicted criminals. But crises are a great leveller. The terrible impact of covid-19 has raised public awareness and sympathy more than any campaigning book could. So, with this paperback edition, I want to sound the alarm even louder – subhuman prisons make crime worse. And as you read about the shameful state of HMP Wandsworth during my visit in 2016, I’d ask that you keep one additional thought in mind: things are so much worse now.

Chris Atkins, July 2020

Prologue

It’s about 10 p.m. I’m locked in my cell, H2-09, with my padmate, Gary, a likeable young Scouser who’s nearing the end of his sentence for smuggling cannabis. We’re watching a film set in an American prison. Not for the first time, I reflect on how popular culture gives an oddly false impression of life inside. The on-screen criminals are ripped, tanned and seemingly possess all their faculties. It’s a far cry from the emaciated, spice-addicted souls who surround me in Wandsworth, many of whom are mentally ill.

There’s a jangling of keys outside, and our cell door is unlocked. Standing in the doorway is Mr Hussain, a young screw I get on reasonably well with.

‘Evening, Chris,’ he calls to me. ‘I’ve just dropped Rob off next door. He’s having a right mental.’

‘It’s not my shift.’

The officer shrugs. ‘None of the other Listeners will talk to him.’

My curiosity is piqued. ‘Give me a minute.’

I put on some flip-flops and head out the door. I currently live at the more salubrious end of H Wing, which is an enormous Victorian prison block. The ground floor is dark and deserted, except for a couple of rats sniffing around the bins. We walk down the landing and Hussain opens the door to the Listener Suite. This name is quite misleading, as it’s basically two derelict cells knocked together. The windows are broken and the temperature is barely above freezing. It’s harshly lit by a couple of strip lights and it stinks of cigarette smoke. There’s no furniture except for three plastic chairs and a revolting toilet in the corner. It resembles a 1970s police interview room and is hardly an ideal space for giving emotional support to vulnerable inmates. Nonetheless, this is where I do most of my work as a Listener. I have recently been trained by the Samaritans to help prisoners who are suicidal, self-harming or just losing their minds. I’ve now been Listening for several months, and witness more suffering in a single day than I would have previously seen in a whole year.

Sitting waiting for me is Rob, a rather large prisoner in his late twenties.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ says Officer Hussain as he locks us in.

Rob is sweating profusely, and glares at me through enormous bloodshot eyes. He’s wearing his prison clothes inside out, with crazy gibberish scrawled all over the fabric, and he is obviously having some form of psychotic episode. Over the last couple of months, I’ve become quite accustomed to meeting people suffering severe mental illness in prison. Most of the time they are far more likely to be the victim of violence from other inmates rather than the perpetrator. That said, Rob looks seriously scary. I cautiously sit down on the seat furthest away from him. ‘Hi, I’m Chris. How are you feeling this evening?’

‘What the FUCK are you asking me that for?’ he hisses. It’s around this point that I regret coming in here alone. Listeners are technically supposed to work in pairs at night, just in case we get stuck with a dangerous inmate. But over Christmas, our numbers have plummeted, while call-outs have soared, so the rules have fallen by the wayside.

‘Right, sorry, stupid question, sorry.’ I notice that Rob has half a comb sticking out of his hair, and I’m unsure if this is a fashion statement or a potential weapon.

‘What do you know about quantum mechanics?’ he demands.

‘Quite a bit as it happens,’ I say. ‘I actually studied physics at Oxford, and that was the only part I found interesting.’

We spend the next 10 minutes discussing wave–particle duality.

‘I’m seriously impressed with your knowledge,’ I say warmly, congratulating myself on building up such a strong rapport.

He nods and leans in conspiratorially. Assuming that he’s finally going to open up about his inner turmoil, I lean in too. Instead, he grins like the Grim Reaper and says, ‘Sing me a song or I’ll slit your throat.’

Introduction

My spell behind bars coincided with the worst prison crisis in history. In 2016, there was a 27% increase in prisoner assaults nationally, with assaults on staff up by 38%. The number of self-inflicted deaths had more than doubled since 2013, with 113 prisoners taking their own lives.1 The president of the Prison Governors Association said that conditions were ‘the worst we have ever seen’.2

I spent nine months in Wandsworth before being shipped out to an open prison, which was like the Ritz in comparison. This book charts my unlikely and often surreal experiences through those crazy months, and tries to explain why our jails are in such dire straits. Prisons are frequently in the news, and the crisis is usually blamed on drugs and plummeting officer numbers. These are definitely real issues, but for me, the main problem, which hardly gets any airtime, is that prisons are extraordinarily badly run. If Wandsworth was a hospital, patients would be discharged with far more diseases than when they arrived. If it was a school, pupils would graduate knowing less than when they enrolled. The management was so grossly inept that if they were running any other part of the public sector, they’d be immediately sacked. But prisons exist in a vacuum, where the authorities can tightly restrict all outgoing information and cover up their own incompetence. Free from public scrutiny, Wandsworth and other prisons are able to continue failing on an epic scale.

I was perhaps unique in Wandsworth, as I’d spent years making documentaries. I knew that the biggest barrier to capturing a decent story is access. It’s often very difficult getting into interesting places, as the gatekeepers don’t want anyone seeing what’s going on. Even when access is granted, film-makers are often put under such tight restrictions that we only film what they want us to see. But in Wandsworth, I was just another prisoner. I had no press pass, minders or aggressive PRs telling me not to ask interesting questions. This unfettered access gave me a front-row seat for the extraordinary chaos that unfolded in Wandsworth every day. I kept detailed notes of everything I witnessed, which formed the basis of this book. I hope my unvarnished account will provide a strong argument for urgent prison reform.

I have to admit that before my incarceration, prison reform wasn’t something I spent much time thinking about. Why on earth should law-abiding citizens concern themselves with what happens to a bunch of criminals? Well, having spent a considerable amount of time in the system, I can now think of two key reasons. Firstly, most reasonable people would agree that everyone should be treated with minimum standards of decency and care, even if they’ve done something wrong. Whatever your baseline for humane treatment, I can guarantee British prisons are falling way below it. A recent HM Inspectorate of Prisons report details ‘some of the most disturbing prison conditions we have ever seen – conditions which have no place in an advanced nation in the 21st century’.3 Far from being the ‘holiday camps’ described by numerous tabloids,4 I saw how British prisons are brutalising teenagers to a lethal degree.

Osvaldas Pagirys was just 18 when he was arrested for stealing sweets. He was held in Wandsworth during my time there, and was found with a noose around his neck on five separate occasions. The authorities treated his mental illness as bad behaviour, and he was sent to the punishment block. One evening he pressed the emergency button, but officers took 37 minutes to arrive. The teenager was found hanging and unconscious, and died shortly afterwards. At the inquest, the jury found that this delay, along with general poor treatment, had contributed to his death.5

I didn’t meet Osvaldas, but while working as a Listener, I sat with lots of similarly disturbed teenagers. Anywhere else they’d be treated as human beings who needed urgent medical help. But because they were in prison, often on pathetically trivial offences, they were shouted at like animals and locked up permanently in a concrete box. The spiralling suicide rate means that many of them will not survive.

If this doesn’t swing it, then you might want to think about the cost. Prisons are supposed to rehabilitate inmates so they don’t inflict further harm on society. On that basis, your hard-earned taxes are being flushed down the drain, as Britain has the worst reoffending rate in Europe, with 48% of ex-prisoners being reconvicted within one year of release.6 The cost of reoffending alone is estimated at £15 billion,7 more than three times the entire prison budget. This means that your house may well have been burgled by someone who has already served several jail sentences. If British prisons functioned effectively, you’d still have your laptop and silverware.

However, this book definitely isn’t an earnest lecture on criminology and penal policy. Wandsworth was a cesspit of misery and despair, but I also found it darkly entertaining. Most prisoners were locked up for 23 hours a day, which meant they would do anything to get out of their cells. Several Muslims joined Alcoholics Anonymous, despite being strictly teetotal, just to attend the weekly meetings. Other prisoners claimed to be simultaneously Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist, simply to get unlocked for the various religious services. We had a new mindfulness programme called ‘Tunnelling’, which proved remarkably popular until it became clear that it involved teaching prisoners how to control their breathing rather than dig tunnels. Laughing at this ridiculousness was often the only way to get through.

When I first arrived, I was trapped in a cell all day, and was thus completely oblivious to how the jail was (not) functioning. As time went on, I became increasingly trusted, and gained access to hitherto restricted parts of the building. This enabled me to stick my nose into steadily darker corners of the Wandsworth machine, and witness increasingly disturbing events. I became a Listener after four months, and dealt with dozens of highly disturbed and vulnerable inmates.

My prison journey often felt like a deranged computer game. I’d fight my way through a level, dodging baddies and collecting tokens, before finally being confronted with a terrifying obstacle. Somehow I would manage to beat the challenge – be it getting more visits with my son, or escaping a psychopathic cellmate – only to discover a whole new level with even darker trials. Each level presented ever more shocking revelations about how the system was falling apart, as well as teaching me vital prison survival skills. I’ve structured the book around these ascending levels of madness, which illuminate progressively shocking aspects of British jails.

I’d never set foot inside a prison before, and had led a very different life to most of my neighbours. In many ways this makes my conviction more damning, as I’d squandered the life chances that had been denied to my fellow prisoners. So before I jump into the deep end, I should give some brief context, and explain how a lefty middle-class film-maker found himself banged up in one of the most notorious jails in the country.

I want to be clear that I did definitely do something wrong, and the events that led me to prison were largely my own fault. I first began producing films in the late 1990s, when the Blair government introduced tax breaks for the British film industry. Some enterprising accountants created investment schemes to enable bankers and footballers to avoid paying tax. These investors would notionally back a film, and a small amount of the cash would trickle down to the producers to spend on the production. Tax financing was subsequently used to make hundreds of British films, some of which we all know and love.

In the early 2000s, I was making pretty low-budget fiction feature films, all of which were part financed with these tax schemes. I then moved into documentaries, and directed a Michael Moore-style film attacking Tony Blair for undermining human rights during the War on Terror. Taking Liberties was released in cinemas in 2007, garnering excellent reviews and a BAFTA nomination. I then decided to tackle the media business, but no one was willing to pay for a movie that intended to burn our own industry. I pitched the film everywhere, and all I heard was a resounding no. The only person who said yes was an accountant called Terry Potter, who ran one of the funds that put tax money into movies.

By this stage, HMRC were closing the tax breaks. But Potter flew me out to France and told me that he’d developed a new film-funding scheme. He admitted that he’d made ‘a few modifications’ to circumvent HMRC’s latest restrictions. It was clearly moving towards the darker end of the grey area, but to me, the scheme didn’t sound that different from what was happening more broadly in the film industry at the time.

Bottom line, I should have been more concerned with checking out Potter’s scheme, but I was desperate to get the film made. I can honestly say that while arrogance, hubris and a big ego definitely played their part in making me accept his offer, financial greed most definitely did not. I shook Potter’s hand and agreed we should get on with it.

Over the next two years, we did as Potter instructed: setting up limited companies, raising inflated invoices on demand, and passing money between accounts. Only a small amount was retained by the production company, which was all spent on making the film. In retrospect, I realised it was wrong – possibly criminal – and I should have known better. However, Potter assured me it would not get us into trouble. I heard what I wanted to hear and quickly forgot about the funding, becoming consumed by what was an extremely ambitious production.

Notwithstanding the fact that I went to prison for the film, Starsuckers definitely includes some of my finest work. I secretly filmed Max Clifford boasting about how he protected his clients, specifically Mohamed Al-Fayed and Dustin Hoffman. We sold fake celebrity gossip stories to the tabloids to prove they didn’t check facts. The Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Star all printed our nonsense about female pop stars being secretly obsessed with quantum physics. I also did a reverse undercover sting on several Sunday tabloid journalists who were trying to buy celebrity medical records. This exposed a widespread culture of unlawful behaviour in tabloid newspapers, including the News of the World.

Starsuckers finally premiered at the 2009 London Film Festival, and was released in selected cinemas. The Guardian splashed our exploits on the front page for two days running, prompting the News of the World to threaten to sue us for breaching their privacy. Max Clifford also threatened to take out an injunction against the film, and we had to beep Fayed and Hoffman’s names out of the final edit. We got great reviews, and the film was broadcast on Channel 4 several times and released on DVD. Despite making a vast amount of noise, however, it didn’t make a bean.

In 2011, the phone-hacking scandal shut down the News of the World. Lord Justice Leveson was tasked to investigate the press, and Starsuckers was screened to the inquiry, where I also gave detailed evidence. The judge’s final report agreed with much of what was said in the film. Max Clifford was arrested for sex crimes in 2012; I was subsequently interviewed by officers from Operation Yewtree and handed over all the tapes of my undercover filming. Clifford was convicted and sentenced to eight years, and in 2017 Fayed8 and Hoffman were accused of sexual misconduct in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal (neither has been charged or convicted and both deny the accusations). By every measure, Starsuckers had vastly exceeded my expectations.

Once the production was over, I said goodbye to Potter and started making documentaries directly for TV. In 2012, I fronted a Dispatches for Channel 4, investigating corrupt private detectives who were running a black market in personal information. I then made another Dispatches about Coronation Street stars secretly promoting products on social media. It made the front pages of the Sun and the Mirror, and led to ITV threatening to sue Channel 4. Next I produced a BBC Panorama about bad practice in big charities, revealing that Comic Relief was secretly investing donations in arms companies, tobacco firms and alcoholic drinks manufacturers. I wrote and directed a fiction film for Channel 4 about a future in which UKIP actually won the general election. It became one of the most complained-about films of all time, triggering over 6,000 Ofcom complaints. I was pretty much at the top of my game.

But all this time HMRC had been digging into old film-funding schemes. Prolonged austerity had hardened public attitudes to tax dodging, and HMRC had long been vexed by the behaviour of the British film business. In 2014, 14 of us were charged with tax fraud, including Potter and several of his wealthy investors. It was two and a half years before I got to court, and during that time I stepped back from making controversial films. Not working 70-hour weeks actually enabled me to be a far better dad to my infant son Kit. I’d separated from his mother, Lottie, but we remained on very good terms, and Kit spent half the week with each of us.

Potter was convicted in September 2015, along with three City bankers, and my court date was set for May 2016. The evidence against me seemed mostly circumstantial, and the prosecution didn’t deny that I hadn’t been personally paid out of the scheme. However, I was party to some fairly damning emails, including one where I suggested that we delete the entire conversation. I’d made films accusing others of wrongdoing, and I had to be judged by the same standard.

The trial was a horrendous ordeal, and it felt as if I was being slowly squeezed by an enormous vice. It didn’t help that I became addicted to sleeping pills, and was knocking back a bottle of wine and a pack of fags every night. I was convicted on 24 June 2016, hours after the EU referendum result had been announced. If I’d been on the jury, I’d probably have come to the same decision.

I was told to return to court a week later for sentencing. My barrister told me to expect at least six years. This terrifying figure was a consequence of me being convicted of conspiring to help Potter and the bankers attempting to defraud about £1,000,000. Only £85,000 had actually trickled down to the production company, which had all been spent on making the film, but on a conspiracy case everyone is responsible for the whole lot. Potter’s scheme needed films to evade the tax, and my documentary was a crucial cog in the machine.

During that week, I was overwhelmed by a lot of love. Friends, family and former colleagues rushed forward with support and commiserations, and there was a feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God’ from several quarters. I went onto autopilot to deal with the admin of closing off my life, and cleared out my north London house. I had been warned that HMRC would potentially come after my assets, so it might well need to be sold. It was only when I had to sort out Kit’s things that I completely cracked. Packing away children’s toys has such horrible connotations that I kept having to tell myself that Kit was alive and well and playing in a nearby park. I was about to store the child seat for my bike, before realising that he would be miles too big for it by the time I got out.

My best mate Tom had a bit too much fun researching what I was allowed to take into prison, scouring numerous blogs about what to expect in jail. He ran round Camden sourcing the contents of a ‘bang-up bag’, principally tracksuits from Sports Direct, which seemed to be the lag’s brand of choice. The blogs all advised that newbies take in a cheap watch, flip-flops, spare underwear and stamps. I also packed all the books that I’d been meaning to read for the past five years and had never got round to starting.

As my final hours of freedom ticked away, several people recommended that I write down everything I experienced in prison. In what follows, I’ve changed all the names unless I’m referencing public figures, quoting news reports, or writing about people who’ve given express permission to be identified. I’ve taken particular care with anything I heard while working as a Listener, and have altered some personal details to make identification impossible. Some of the dates have also been changed.

1

Trauma and Toothpaste

In which I check into E Wing – aka Beirut – and am surrounded by mentally ill drug addicts, but luck out with my first cellmate.

Things I learn:

1) How long I’ll have to spend in Wandsworth

2) The grim realities of prison cuisine

3) A curious new version of apple bobbing

Things get so bad that I consider faking Christianity, and I eventually depart to the uplands of A Wing.

1 July 2016

I wake up at 7 a.m., and lie in bed hoping that this last week is only the remnants of a terrifying nightmare. Radio 4 is commemorating the Battle of the Somme, which began exactly a hundred years ago. If those young men could run at machine guns, then I can probably handle a stretch in prison. I walk over to Lottie’s flat to have breakfast with Kit. He knows that something is up as soon as he sees I’m in my court clothes. I bought a new suit from M&S specifically for the trial, which Kit hated me wearing from day one.

As we play with his little cash register, he keeps saying, ‘Hello, customer, what do you want to buy today?’ When it’s time to go, he gives me a hug goodbye. I don’t want to leave. I’m really, really scared. He decides that I need another hug, and leans over and holds me extra tight. This releases a huge surge of confidence and energy that I’ve never felt before or since. I feel as if I’m cloaked in an impenetrable force field.

‘I can do this,’ I whisper to myself, and stride out the door.

I’m accompanied to the sentencing by Lottie’s brother and her mum, Debby. She’s been a tower of strength, and we had nightly debriefs in her garden throughout the trial. When we get out at London Bridge, the sun is streaming down, and we head round the corner to Southwark Crown Court. Three photographers are waiting for me and jostle to get my picture. One of them shouts, ‘Good luck, mate!’ and I walk up the steps for the last time.

In Court 5, my friends and family are packing out the public gallery. After a couple of minutes, Judge Beddoe whisks in. My barrister pleads for leniency, but when the judge starts speaking, he doesn’t sound in a very forgiving mood. He accepts that I didn’t know precisely what Potter was up to, but is going to punish me for facilitating the scheme. He says that I should get six years for the main count, and two years for a side count, which ought to run consecutively.

My internal ticker tape is now up to eight years. Prisoners usually serve half their overall sentence, so I’m constantly halving the figures to work out how long I’ll be inside. I start zoning out as everything gets quieter and further away. Kit’s hug is still protecting me. The judge then looks at me and says that my sentence is five years, and I’ll serve two and a half inside. I suddenly snap back into the room as if I’ve been given defibrillation. ‘Only five?!’ I shout in my head. ‘Get out of here before he changes his mind!’ I stand up and give a moronic wave to the judge. The journalists in the press gallery look as if I’ve gone completely batshit as I bowl out the side door, where I’m cuffed up to a custody officer who is a dead ringer for Eric Idle from Monty Python.

‘Are you sure he said five?’ I gibber.

‘That’s what you’ve got,’ he replies, and presses a button to call the lift.

Not surprisingly, backstage is a lot shabbier than the customer-facing parts of the courthouse. It’s like accidentally taking the service elevator in a hotel. The doors open into the basement, and I’m led to a small desk, where an officer takes some basic personal details. I’m then cuffed up to the young guard who sat in the dock with me during the trial. We got on quite well and I’d sometimes chip in on his Sudoku puzzle when we hit peak boredom.

‘What happened?’ he asks.

‘Guilty on the lot. Got five years.’

He smiles sympathetically. ‘From Judge Beddoe, that’s not too bad. Cells are through here.’

On the wall is a large whiteboard listing the names of my fellow prisoners. Next to Cell 5 is scrawled CLIFFORD.

‘Is that Max Clifford?’ I ask the guard.

He nods proudly. Clifford is still serving his original prison sentence, but has now been hauled back to court to stand trial for more historic sexual assaults.

‘I sort of know him,’ I whisper.

The lad checks that no one else is around. ‘Do you want to have a word?’

‘Fuck yeah.’

There’s a little round porthole on the cell door, and I peer inside.Clifford sits hunched at the back of a tiny windowless kennel. He looks nothing like the cocky king of PR I filmed eight years ago; rather he resembles a geriatric Osama bin Laden.

‘Hi, Max!’

He edges up to the door, smiling carefully. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me. Chris Atkins. I turned you over in my film Starsuckers.’

’ He looks extremely rattled, probably assuming that I’ve come to torment him further. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demands.

‘I just got five years for fraud.’ I hold up my cuffed hand to illustrate the point. ‘For funding Starsuckers, funnily enough.’

His mood brightens. ‘Right, OK then. How are things otherwise?’

‘Yeah, not bad. Couldn’t believe the Brexit result.’

‘Incredible, wasn’t it?’

‘Madness. Good luck in your new case.’

‘Cheers. Mind how you go.’

The guard leads me a few doors down. ‘You’re wasting away,’ he says. ‘You should have some lunch.’ He’s not wrong; I barely ate during the trial, and my weight has plummeted. Now that I know my fate, my appetite is flooding back. He offers a microwaved chicken curry, and I order two.

I’m locked in a dingy box, about three feet by five. It’s the first time I’ve ever been detained against my will, but I feel oddly elated. The judge indicated that I might get eight years, so receiving only five seems like a lucky escape. After 20 minutes, the food arrives, but there’s nothing to eat off. I balance the microwave container on my lap and bolt everything down like a starving dog, dropping much of it on my M&S trousers.

An hour later, I’m led through a holding bay and into a big white Serco van. I squeeze into a tiny box in the back. It makes flying Ryanair seem luxurious – there’s no seat belt and the legroom is nonexistent. The van drives out from under the courthouse and starts to crawl across south London. Through the darkened window I can see people with that Friday-afternoon spring in their step. I try and fail to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be joining them for some considerable time.

The van finally pulls to a halt. I squint up at the sinister Gothic architecture looming above us. It looks like Castle Grayskull from the He Man cartoons. A gate opens, admitting us into a massive courtyard, and we reverse towards a vast Victorian prison wing. There are some Portakabins tacked onto the side, and a big sign says HMP WANDSWORTH: RECEPTION.

I’m let out of the van, and join six other prisoners inside one of the Portakabins. The room is pretty bashed up; in the corner is a loo cubicle with no door. The other inmates are all black, and much younger than me. One lad is shaking and twitching, I’m guessing through drug withdrawal. Everyone else is wearing tracksuits, while I stand awkwardly in my curried court clothes. One by one our names are called, and the others start heading round the corner to be processed. I’m the last to be summoned, and I walk hesitantly through. Standing behind a desk is an officer who presumably got the job based on his highly intimidating appearance. He’s bald and bearded, with various sinister tattoos, and reminds me of the cave troll that skewers Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

‘Right, Atkins. You’ve just got five years, do you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ I reply as confidently as I can manage.

The troll looks me up and down. ‘You’re remarkably calm for someone who’s received a long prison sentence. Are you a calm kind of person?’

I shrug. ‘It’s probably just the shock. I expect I’ll completely lose my shit in a few days.’

He shrugs back. ‘This is your first time inside, so let me warn you – this place is full of slime. Total vermin. Isn’t that right, Dave?’ The equally huge screw to his left grunts in agreement. ‘Of the sixteen hundred prisoners in this joint,’ the cave troll continues, ‘there are about fifty I could have a reasonable conversation with. The rest are pond life.’ At the time, this seems like an unfair slight on the population of Wandsworth.

‘Do you smoke?’ he asks.

‘I just quit,’ I reply, and mean it.

He fills in some forms. ‘You stick out like a sore thumb, so the vultures will soon come knocking. Say no to everything and you’ll be fine.’ My photo is taken, I’m given a prison number – A8892DT – and then I’m locked in a holding cell on my own. The other arrivals were existing Wandsworth residents, so I’m the only newly sentenced prisoner being processed.

My system is flooded with adrenaline. I’m sharply focused on everything that’s happening around me, only nothing is. It reminds me of when I did undercover filming, minus the constant reassuring knowledge that I could walk away at any moment. There’s a poster on the wall: Welcome to Wandsworth. The photos show a spotlessly clean cell, a privacy curtain shielding the toilet area, and a small desk. Two jolly officers are smiling and waving at the camera. That doesn’t look too bad, I think to myself.

I’m called out of the room and told to follow a winding grey path that feeds through reception. It’s like a dystopian Yellow Brick Road, with flatulent prison officers instead of Munchkins.

First stop: clothing. I’m led into a little booth, and instructed to undress. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for the naked squat over a mirror, but the officer just gives me a cursory look. I’ve brought in the recommended cheap tracksuits, but apparently I won’t be able to wear my own clothes until I’ve been inside a few months without causing trouble. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with prison-issue kit. I’m handed an overstretched pair of grey tracksuit bottoms that feel like they’re held together by itching powder, and an enormous thick blue T-shirt that resembles the smocks worn by medieval peasants. The officer assures me that these garments have been thoroughly cleaned, but they nonetheless smell like someone’s died in them. My court clothes are stuffed into my ‘prop box’, a flimsy black plastic crate that will store items I’m not allowed on the wings.

Next stop: property. A barrel-shaped screw produces my bang-up bag and empties my possessions onto a conveyor belt. Another officer starts removing prohibited items, which he then shoves into my prop box. I watch with eager anticipation to see what makes it through. It’s like an austere version of The Generation Game. I lose the radio, quite a few toiletries and a hardback notebook. The officer inspects my brand-new Argos watch, and tosses that in the box too.

‘Er, what’s wrong with that?’ I timidly ask.

‘It’s got a stopwatch,’ he replies. To this day I have no idea why this causes a security problem in a prison.

Thankfully there is no restriction on my books, which all get thrown into a clear plastic bin liner with my other permitted items. The prison blogs advised bringing in some cash, and I have £100 in an envelope. This is taken by an officer, who assures me that it’ll be added to my account.

Then it’s medical. A nurse asks if I have any health problems, and I tell her that I’m physically fine. She says that I’ll get a more thorough ‘second-day screening’ over the weekend.

All that remains is a series of interviews with various officers.

‘Have you got anything sharp in your pockets?’

‘Do you have any mental illnesses?’

‘Have you got anything sharp in your pockets?’

‘Do you have any mental illnesses?’

I’m asked the same questions over and over again; it reminds me of doing a press junket for a film: ‘How did you come up with the idea for the movie? Has working on the film changed you at all? Have you got any drugs on you?’ As in press junkets, a lot of the officers’ questioning turns towards drugs. I can truthfully say that I’m completely clean.

‘Are you a racist?’

‘Are you a homophobe?’

‘When did you last commit arson?’

I wonder who would actually answer these questions in the affirmative. Apparently this grilling is to ensure that it’s safe for me to share a cell.

I’m given a ‘non-smoker’s pack’, a small plastic bag containing tea, coffee, biscuits and chocolate. I ask about visits, and am told that I can have as many as I want in the first week. Another officer hands me a slip of paper with an eight-digit pin number on. ‘This is your two-pound emergency phone credit. It’ll let you call anyone in the next twenty-four hours. You might want to use it now, as you’ll probably be banged up all weekend.’

I scurry to a battered blue prison phone on the wall and call Lottie. She answers, and the available credit starts plummeting downwards.

‘I got five years!’ I gasp.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m at Wandsworth now; it’s not too bad so far. I can have as many visits as I want this week.’

‘Everyone wants to come and see you. I’ll sort out a rota.’

‘How’s Kit?’

‘Fine, he’s eating his tea and watching Sarah and Duck.’

‘Tell him I love him.’

The credit is almost out, so I say goodbye. An officer ushers me into another holding room.

‘Just hang here until someone can take you up to the wing.’

It feels like the calm before the storm. I fish out The Constant Gardener, and try and read the first page, but not a single sentence goes in. The door opens and my name is called, slightly pointlessly since I’m the only person in here. I pick up my bin liner of belongings and shuffle out.

A female officer leads me into a corridor that connects the reception Portakabins to the prison wing. ‘The induction wing is a bit crazy at the moment,’ she warns. The corridor can’t be more than 20 feet long, but it takes forever to get to the end. She opens the final door, wishes me luck, and I step through the wormhole.

The first thing that hits me is the noise: yelling, banging, screaming, grunting, begging, barking, threatening, ranting, laughing, trading, scoring, whining, arguing, fighting, howling, crying. It’s as if someone has downloaded every single prison sound effect from the internet and is blaring them all out, dialled up to 11.

I’m standing on the ground floor of an enormous Victorian jail block, and it’s about as prisony an environment as you could possibly imagine. The landing stretches out a hundred yards left and right, with cell doors running down each wall. Looming above are two more levels, with thin spurs along both sides. It looks like it last had a makeover when Oscar Wilde stayed here in 1895. It’s basically Porridge infrastructure meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest personnel, and is awash with the most terrifying individuals I’ve ever seen. They mostly appear to be either severely mentally ill, off their heads on drugs, or both. If I was directing this scene in a film, I would complain that the set had been prisoned up far too much and dial down the existential wailing. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this moment. I have overdosed on blue pills, we’ve smashed through the looking glass and are now light years away from Kansas.

‘Are you Atkins?’

I turn round to see a comparatively normal-looking man in a tracksuit. He’s about 50, wearing thick plastic glasses and holding a clipboard.

‘Yes,’ I squeak.

‘Didn’t you just get sentenced by Judge Beddoe?’

‘Er, yeah, got five years.’

He looks surprised. ‘How did you manage that? The cunt gave me fourteen.’

I’m not sure what to say. I go for ‘Sorry,’ which doesn’t really cut it.

He calls to another prisoner. ‘STEVE! Steve!’ An officious-looking bald man potters up.

‘This is Atkins,’ says the bespectacled prisoner. ‘He just came in from Beddoe, only got a five.’

‘Fucking what? That’s just a parking ticket!’ Steve storms off.

The bespectacled prisoner introduces himself. ‘I’m Hitchins, the induction orderly.’

‘Have you been here long?’ I ask.

‘Two years, living the dream. Let me find you a cell where you won’t be sharing with a psychopath. Not as easy as it sounds.’ He vanishes into the throng, while I stay where I am, refusing to believe that any of this is really happening. That officer was right – I do stick out like a sore thumb.

A drooling lad with a bilious skin rash drags a trolley past and hands me a soggy baguette.

‘Is this lunch?’ I ask.

‘Dinner,’ he giggles back.

Hitchins soon reappears. ‘I’ve found you a good guy to move in with. Follow me.’

I grab my sack of possessions and totter off after him. He strides down the landing, completely impervious to the screeching prisoners milling around us.

‘This is the truffle shuffle,’ he explains. ‘Junkies coming out for their methadone hits.’ At the end of the landing are some iron stairs, and I follow Hitchins to the very top level. The whole wing stretches out in front of us. There is a hundred-foot drop down to the bottom level, and heavy netting is stretched across the huge gap, designed to break the fall of prisoners hurling themselves into the abyss. Right now, I know how they feel.

We head down the right-hand spur, past a series of blue cell doors. Hitchins is still firing information at me. ‘Don’t expect to get out much; then again, who’d want to be out with this lot? Over the weekend, there’ll be constant bang-up.’ I work out that this is prison jargon for being locked up for a long period of time.

He seems a useful person to have around. ‘Do you live on this wing?’ I ask.

‘Fuck no. This is the worst wing in the prison; we call it Beirut. Right, this is you.’

We stop outside a cell marked E4-36. An officer appears jangling his keys and opens it up. I slip inside and the door clangs shut behind me. It’s the heaviest noise I’ve heard in my whole life.

The cell is about six feet by twelve. My first instinct is to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority about the Welcome to Wandsworth poster in reception. It promised a spotlessly clean cell, but these walls are covered in demonic graffiti, and half the paint is peeling off. The bunk beds look like they’d collapse from sleeping on the bottom, let alone venturing onto the top. The mattresses are made from heavy-duty blue plastic, like those used in hospices, designed for the easy cleaning of bodily fluids. There’s a wooden desk along the wall that’s about a foot deep, with a couple of battered shelving units at each end. The chairs are white lumps of plastic, and at the back is a hideous toilet that doesn’t have a seat. There’s no privacy curtain, though someone has improvised with a prison-issue green sheet; its opacity is actually enhanced by the large brown stains. The floor is cold concrete, and it all smells pretty bad.

Sitting on the bottom bunk is a tanned bald man in his sixties. He has a thin face with wire-framed glasses, and is eating his dinner off a chair while watching TV.

‘You look completely fucked, mate,’ he says kindly. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

I readily agree. He introduces himself as Ted, and explains that he’s just been re-arrested in Spain, having previously absconded from a long sentence for drug smuggling.

I crawl onto the top bunk. I’m now thankful that I lost so much weight during the trial, as anyone over 10 stone would flatten the whole structure. My appetite has returned at the very moment I’m stuck in a place notorious for terrible food. I wolf down the manky baguette in seconds. I’m still starving, so I eat the entire pack of biscuits from my non-smoker’s pack. We watch the evening news – the government is in meltdown following the EU referendum. My life and the country have seemingly pulled a handbrake turn at exactly the same moment. I can’t help feeling that my incarceration and Brexit are somehow mystically interlinked. Ted’s political views become apparent as he shouts, ‘Go on, Nige!’ every time Nigel Farage appears on screen.

Ted turns off the telly, and I lie in the sweltering dark. So this is what real trauma feels like. My left leg is twitching involuntarily, like a smashed cymbal that’s still reverberating. I can taste the shock in my mouth. One minute I’m crushed by the realisation that I can’t look after Kit for the foreseeable future. The next I’m fretting about cancelling my direct debits. Forget feeling the full legal force of the British government; I’m now fearful that I’ll leave prison to the mother of all Netflix bills.

The noise from the wing is intense. Someone is repeatedly kicking their door, someone else is screaming at him to shut up, someone else is crying out for an officer, someone else wants to score drugs, someone else wants to borrow tobacco, someone else is going to cripple their neighbour for non-payment of an earlier tobacco debt, someone else has somehow got hold of a thumpingly loud stereo and is playing drill rap at such a volume that the walls throb. I’m a bit irked by this, remembering how my little analogue radio was confiscated in reception. The protective bubble from Kit’s hug is fading, and dots start jumping in front of my eyes. I drift off and dream about the trial.

2 July

I wake from the best night’s sleep I’ve had for weeks. It takes me a while to work out that I’m in prison and it’s a Saturday. Ted is already up.

‘When do we get unlocked?’ I ask.

He laughs. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get out at all.’

Inmates keep coming up to our door and demanding tobacco.

‘Skinny burn, please, I beg you!’

‘Fam, you give me burn, I pay you back canteen.’

I start to stammer an apology, but Ted simply barks, ‘Fuck off!’

I’m finding it nearly impossible to absorb my new surroundings. Instead I try to contemplate the bigger picture, and start to digest the fact that I’ll be in prison for the next couple of years. This makes me feel even worse, so I go back to looking around the room. The graffiti is mainly incomprehensible, but near my bed someone has scrawled, They can lock the locks, but they can’t stop the clocks. It’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard since I arrived.

I slowly unpack my things, and pull out some photos of Kit.

‘Toothpaste,’ says Ted. I rummage in my bag and hand him a tube of Colgate. ‘No, you idiot, use toothpaste to stick your photos to the wall.’ I do as instructed, and it holds surprisingly well. Ted winks and points to his head. ‘Up here for thinking, down here for dancing,’ and motions to his feet.

The door unexpectedly opens, and an officer shouts, ‘S and Ds!’ This is ‘Social and Domestics’, a brief window to get out of the cell to do whatever needs doing. Ted takes charge of the schedule. ‘I need a crap; why don’t you go and see what the showers are like.’

I nervously head out onto the landing, where the other residents are also spilling out, and am directed to the shower room, which is on the opposite spur. I walk into a wall of steam, and I’m overwhelmed by the stench of marijuana mixed with human waste. I now realise why the prison blogs strongly recommended flip-flops, as the floor is ankle deep in plastic bags, razors, floss and shampoo bottles. There are only six shower heads, and the place is heaving with bodies. I quickly undress and dive in. It takes me a moment to clock that everyone else is showering in their pants. Being the only naked person in the room isn’t exactly helping my efforts to remain inconspicuous.

We’re unable to lock the cell door, so Ted and I take turns to keep watch. He borrows my flip-flops and goes for a shower, and I’m soon visited by our next-door neighbour. He has a couple of gruesome facial scars and several missing teeth.

‘I see you’ve got a TV,’ he drawls in a thick Birmingham accent. I really wish Ted was here. ‘I haven’t got a TV,’ he continues.

‘Sorry about that,’ I stammer. I have no idea how to end this conversation.

‘The screws wouldn’t gimme one. They said I should borrow yours.’ I steadfastly refuse to take the hint. He peers into our cell, his beady eyes alighting on a copy of the Sun on Ted’s bed. ‘You’ve got a newspaper as well!’ he says accusingly.

I feel cornered, fearful that I’ll get shanked over a tabloid newspaper that I hate. Mercifully Ted soon reappears, his antennae twitching at the potential home invasion. The Brummie scuttles away.

‘What did that inbred want?’ Ted demands. I’m flushed with pride as I recount how I held back the marauding hordes.

After that, we’re locked up for the rest of the day. I always thought that inmates were coy about discussing their crimes, but Ted is more than happy to talk about his colourful career. He was initially arrested in 2004 for importing rather a lot of cocaine. ‘A lot’ turns out to be 115 kilos. The police raided his house, and found 2,000 Ecstasy tablets, a dozen fake passports, £500,000 in cash, a pepper spray and 12 grams of cannabis. He is still smarting over the last item. ‘That hash was just for personal use – I never sell anything less than a bleeding kilo.’

He was charged with multiple drugs conspiracies. The evidence against him was overwhelming, so he pleaded guilty and got a 17-year sentence. That meant eight and a half years in prison. He started out at Woodhill, the notorious Category B jail frequented by murderers and terrorists, and ended up at an open prison that allowed offenders out to work in the local community.

‘I landed a great number working as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool,’ he says. ‘Perfect place to pick up single mums – talk about mouth to mouth.’

A few months before the end of his sentence, he did a runner and went ‘on his toes’ to Spain.

‘Why did you abscond so close to the finish line?’ I ask.

‘’Cos of my POCA,’ he grunts.

The Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) enables the government to confiscate criminals’ assets. Offenders are ordered to pay back the fruits of their crimes, and can receive more jail time if they don’t cough up.1 Ted was clearly very good at his job, and had built up a large collection of houses and cars, and the CPS tried to get the lot. He was hit with a £2 million bill, and told that if he didn’t pay, he’d get additional years on his sentence.

In Spain, he lay low and enjoyed the sun for four years. A few days before I was sentenced, he was rudely arrested at Malaga airport under a European Arrest Warrant. He was wearing little more than a shirt and shorts.

‘I’ll have to serve out the rest of the original sentence, plus the additional time for the outstanding POCA. Probably a couple of years.’ He says this with mild irritation, as though he’s been stuffed with a larger than expected hotel bill.

I tell him how I came to be in prison, and it feels really good to admit everything to someone in similar straits. Ted is thankfully approving of my crime, as it involved misappropriating money from the British government.

‘How did they nail you in the end?’ he asks.

‘Basically because of a single email. I suggested deleting the whole email chain, and then forgot to do it.’

‘You stupid fucking bastard!’ He is quite annoyed at me for being such a terrible criminal.

3 July

I keep failing to get my head round my situation. It’s like trying to look at a whole mountain while hanging off the side of it. A five-year sentence means I’ll serve two and a half years, which is 30 months. Even saying that figure out loud makes me weak at the knees. Ted knows the system backwards, and maps out how my prison journey will progress from here. As a white-collar criminal on my first offence, I’ll definitely qualify for Cat D status, which is the gateway to open prison. Unfortunately, I can only get made Cat D once I have less than 24 months to serve. This means I’ll have to spend at least six months in Wandsworth.

Two pieces of pink A4 paper are randomly shoved under the door.

‘These are the canteen sheets,’ advises Ted.