EJ Outside Skien Prison in Norway "Better to be outside a jail than inside one..."

 Filming my contribution to the BBC4 programme, Dear Diary, broadcast a number of times this week and again on Sunday 10 Jan at 7pm, was quite a poignant experience. The film makers took me back to Wandsworth prison where I began my life sentence. We were not allowed into the prison, so it was decided that Richard E. Grant, who presents the series, would talk to me outside the prison gates. I spent the first of my twenty years ”inside” on Wandsworth’s D Wing – but I never saw the grim looking gatehouse as the prison van drove me in so I had no idea what it looked like from the outside. Standing there with Grant for the film really brought home to me just how far I have travelled since those dark days.  I went in with no hope of ever achieving a worthwhile life. With no skills or abilities to speak of – all I really had going for me was that I was reasonably literate and healthy. At the time I could never have guessed how valuable these two aspects of my life would become during the years ahead – nor how rare a combination they were amongst my fellow prisoners. Despite these glimmers of light however, my prospects were poor and I firmly believed that my failings were insurmountable. 

My reception into Wandsworth prison determined my attitude for most of the time that I was there – defensive, guarded, untrusting. ”This is Wanno,” said a prison officer, “we do it our way here.”   There were many bully boys among the prison officers then. But the one officer who stood out for me was Mr Barker – a tall, confident, polite man who seemed to make a point of always speaking to you as though you were a fellow human being. His impact on me was such that his is still the only officer’s name I remember from all those I encountered that year.    

For the Dear Diary programme I was asked to read my favourite prison diary The Pain of Confinement by Jimmy Boyle in a mock cell on the set of The Bill. Boyle’s diary remains one of the most powerful testaments to the failure of the UK prison system. He was a success in the end – but he won through in spite of most of what he encountered in prison. I described my own feelings about standing outside the prison into which I disappeared more than twenty five years ago as, “triumphant.” But of course there is no real triumph in my situation. While speaking to Grant I just remembered how bleak that dire place was and how crushing. To stand outside it all these years later with a sense of purpose and direction and optimism was exhilerating. There is nothing I would not do if it would mean I could change what happened in the past. But any good that came from my prison journey came in spite of the likes of Wandsworth prison.