* Kevin Meredith was tried and convicted at the Old Bailey on 18 February 2002 for conspiracy to steal, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
* In prison, the morning meal, breakfast, is usually taken between 7 30 and 8.00, the midday meal is called dinner, and the evening meal tea. In Belmarsh, the following day’s breakfast is given to you in a plastic bag when you go down to the hotplate for tea the night before.
* The reason Mark feels so strongly is because tea-boys, Listeners and hotplate workers spend far longer out of their cells than the rest of us, so it’s a real privilege.
* One pip is a senior officer, two pips a principal officer.
* Actual Bodily Harm and Grievous Bodily Harm.
* For example, if my sentence was reduced by one year, from four to three, I would end up only serving sixteen months and be released on 19 November 2002; whereas with a four-year sentence, the earliest I could hope to be released would be 19 July 2003
* In-cell electricity for television
* The Director General of Prisons, Martin Narey, has since issued a directive that officers should not smoke when on duty.
* Inmates are given £90 when leaving prison if they are of NFA (no fixed abode), £45 if they have somewhere to live. They can go back on social security after a fortnight.
* Beatings up (hammerings) usually take place in the shower room, which is why some prisoners don’t wash from one year to the next The reason the shower room is the preferred place for retribution is because it’s on the top floor at the end of a long corridor, more than four prisoners are allowed to congregate at any one time, and any excess noise is usually ignored as exuberance
* On 30 June 1990, there were 1,725 inmates serving life sentences. On 30 June 2000 this figure had risen by 163 per cent to 4,540, 97 per cent of them male, of whom 3,405 were convicted murderers It’s important to remember that murderers are different to other criminals. For over 50 per cent it’s a first offence, and when they are released, they never commit another crime It’s equally true to say that the other 50 per cent are professional criminals, who do not deserve a momen
t of your sympathy
* I am an admirer of the eminent heart surgeon, Sir Magdi Yacoub, and any donation you give will assist his current research
* This picture of my cell was drawn by Derek Jones I was not allowed to take a photograph of it.
* Drugs are often packed into a condom and then pushed up the rectum. Transferring them in the back pew of the chapel can’t be a pleasant experience.
* Convicted prisoners, Members of the House of Lords, and certified lunatics are ineligible to vote. I now qualify in two of the three categories
* I checked later It is in the prison regulations, under ‘Locks, Bolts and Bars’.
* This sentence was added two weeks after I had written the original script
* Since this was written, the Home Secretary has downgraded cannabis/marijuana to Class C classification.
* A joey is about the size of two aspirins.
*Almost all of the prisoners have stopped swearing in front of me.
* This sentence was added while I was editing Volume One, and had finally been transferred to a D-cat. As of today, 1 October 2002, William Keane is still ‘on the out’.
* You never enter someone else’s cell unless invited to do so.
* I presented Fletch’s original script to my publisher in full; names and places have been necessarily omitted from the final text.
* Fletch subsequently attempted to commit suicide on 7 January 2002
* Since the court case, Dr Susan Edwards, Associate Dean of Buckingham Law School, has researched every perjury case during the last ten years
* Michael Beloff QC is an Olympic judge and is allowed to take a guest to the World Championships. His wife Judith has never shown much interest in watching half-naked men running around a track, so we’ve been a regular ‘item’ at such events for the past thirty years.
On the circuit we’re known as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
* The novel has since been renamed Sons of Fortune.
* Bleaching powder can be added to pure heroin, diluting its strength, thus ensuring a larger profit for the dealer It’s against regulations to have two pillows.