In the mid 1990s I was to repeat the whole story of the 1980s, but this time in the English prison system. December 3rd 1995 became the equivalent of May 12th 1984 in the US. There the Feds had knocked on our front door to arrest me – or “take me downtown” anyway. Eleven years later HM Customs were already waiting at Heathrow airport to make the arrest – or to start with, the long and relentless interrogation in a hidden area of the place, unknown to one and all. I had gone there for my flight to Colombia, intending to stay there for good. Or that was the general idea anyway. But real life got in the way.

My first place of abode couldn’t have been a worse one. It happened to be one of the most challenging in the entire English prison system, and passing through a particularly notorious time at exactly the period I was there – supposedly a reign of terror by its officers – or screws. This was in fact the establishment right next to where I had been born exactly fifty years earlier, in Du Cane Road, W12. Welcome to Wormwood Scrubs in other words. That’s where I found myself after attending court at Isleworth on the Monday. By courtesy of the Met police’s Black Maria. Job done – by the authorities. My own lay ahead of me and would drag out for over a year and a half before sentence and being shipped out.

I didn’t actually make many good friends at the Scrubs, although there was a good number of friendly acquaintances. The best example was actually the first person who offered his help and knowledge to get me through the first few confusing weeks, an Indian gentleman known by everyone as UNCLE, and who had worked for many years at Heathrow airport, and had also become enmeshed in its various rackets. He gave me the lowdown on the rather intimidating (and enormous) C Wing, the largest pre-sentence wing in Europe, no less! He and his associates had my back for the first few months I spent in that fearsome environment.

Uncle was totally oblivious to it though, and a lit of people there had huge respect for him – one of a select few older than myself! His expertise served the same purpose at the Scrubs as Pelón’s had done back at Terminal Island. Uncle also enthusiastically joined in with our various ventures into how to set about pooling our resources to make money in the future: by any means apart from drugs. We all concurred that that business was realistically only fit for losers and therefore had no future. Actually it did, but we had all been so badly burned by it that we simply couldn’t run the risk again; we saw no way of making it pay and staying out of jail. Uncle also got sentenced early on, a fairly short one I think, and disappeared from one day to the next – a regular occurrence in that ever-changing environment. And I was only there for around six months anyway.

Because the Scrubs lost its Cat A status (though it was principally a Cat B establishment) I was transferred out to Winchester, which made sense as my case was being held at Bristol Crown Court. HMP Winch was a very different prospect to the brooding old Scrubs. Fifteen months later they lost their Cat A facilities as well, but by that time my case had reached its conclusion so I was ready to move on. In those intervening months though I got to know so many more people that in W12, some of whom became very good friends indeed. Among the first was the young cockney kid RICHIE DELANEY out of Stepney E1, who hung onto every word about my experiences in the US and Colombia.

The highlight for us Cons there was the morning exercise walking around the diminutive yard, and Richie became my most regular companion out there. We had a lot in common, especially our love of adventure, good humour and devotion to London. So we had plenty to chat about on our daily walks, and never seemed to tire of the other’s company. Rather different from my first walking companion, a monotonous one-subject fanatic known to one and all as PETER THE PILOT. His pet subject was micro lights and what he didn’t know about microlights wasn’t worth knowing. But his daily lectures began to take on the dimension of nothing less than an escape plan (yes, really) so I had to ditch his company fairly quickly after that. Soon after he simply disappeared.

So I began walking around with the Eastender Richie instead. Sadly though, this resourceful character began imperceptibly to change as time went by, until eventually I could see he was gradually succumbing to a drug habit; he was on C Wing, where they happened to be most rife. And he became influenced to an increasing degree by a much older benefactor who visited him and promised him a future in a business he had in the north of England. So that is where I think my good friend was bound. I kept in touch by letter after he left, writing down every aspect of my exploits in the States … which served as a sort of prototype of the book I eventually wrote about twenty years later.

Richie had treated me decently and with a lot of respect, which was the main thing and the very same went for my next best friend, LEW Q. This larger than life individual was truly old Hampshire personified, a native of Portsmouth in particular. He explained everything about tough Pompey to me, about its “scummers” and rivalry with the “scummers” of Southampton too. Lew was an unreconstructed old football hooligan and proud of it.

But his humour and good cheer were legendary at HMP Winch, and the man was big enough and loyal enough to come to visit me in Kent after I got transferred; and not only that but he brought his family with him, together with all sorts of goodies for the overflowing visiting table: sandwiches, crisps, cakes, you name it. So Lew was nothing if not generous and a true friend in need! He was actually very laid back, and despite his rep I don’t think he could have hurt a fly. I also don’t think anyone else had the natural ability to cheer people up as much as Lew had. It was certainly a great pleasure to count someone like that as a real friend.

However, my best friend at good old Winchester was neither Richie nor Lew, but another character called PHILIP TOWNSEND. This distinguished gentleman had actually been quite famous back in the 1960s, known around central London as the “Photographer to the Stars” or simply as “Mr Sixties”. He was a photographic journalist who recorded everyday but nevertheless celebrated photos of the famous like Mick Jagger and Mary Quant and everyone else in between. His pics of the Stones at work and at play were among his most famous. Philip was quite posh actually yet still became one of Winchester’s natural heroes.

In my case this had nothing to do with his original fame; it was thanks to his profound belief in my case and in my aims to write everything I could about it. So he encouraged me to set out an article on the subject of cocaine, for which he secured a two-instalment article in the old, satirical magazine Punch for which Philip happened to be an investigative journalist. He became convinced by my writing and by my varied experiences, and later encouraged me to put pen to paper and write a book on all my exploits. This I eventually did – but twenty years later. And fittingly included a dedication in it to my old friend Phil Townsend.

After I got transferred to Kent and he left the open prison of HMP Ford (which he exposed in another edition of Punch) he came to visit me with his wife Penny, to lay the foundations for my new (and greatest) project! I then visited them at home after my own release, when he reassured me he would stand behind any progress with my project – so he never lost faith in my abilities nor interest in the project itself. Punch is now sadly defunct, and even more sadly both Philip and Penny died about ten or twelve years ago without my even realising. Naturally, I regret bitterly not keeping in constant contact with him. One other thing about him he shared with us back at “Winch” was that he had been employed for a number of years as butler to the powerful Rupert Murdoch of all people, thus winning for himself yet another celebrated nickname, “the Butler”! I miss all my friends from those days behind bars – but Phil Townsend above all else.

The only other individual at Winchester who stood out wasn’t exactly a friend, just a good example of how occasionally those who have the opposite qualities of actual friends could also become important acquaintances – partly for the adversity they seemed to encourage, but they did make a difference in other ways, and therefore worth mentioning. The scouser known as BIG TONY certainly ticked that particular box, as did a truly larger than life character in Kent a lot later on. Tony headed an exclusive little faction of fellow Cat A’s there, scousers to a man, and part of a huge (malign) Liverpool presence of gangsters controlling the entire drugs trade of the southwest of England, especially Bournemouth.

Big Tony was a hulking menace who deliberately engendered fear everywhere he went. His “team” were part of a large cocaine and cannabis case at Winchester while I was there, though we could see a gradual loosening of his reputation as he and his cohort attended court during their trial, and consequently of his influence. Shortly after they were gone anyway, so the rest of us could breathe a sigh of relief. Yet the man kindly offered to instal my little 12 inch telly that Laura had brought in. So he wasn’t entirely malign after all. But people are as they are, and we can’t change them … so therefore have to adapt in order to get on with them. And nowhere is this as true as in a prison environment.

Going back to the basis for what became Tales of an English Contrabandista in 2018, it was when I arrived in Kent that I finally established that, by way of those two articles in Punch magazine in 1998. But even before that I had sketched out the general synopsis of the entire three-decade story, during my last weeks at Winchester. And then at HMP Swaleside I not only began keeping a daily diary but also noted down on an unfailing daily basis all those memories locked away in my brain, always ready to be awakened when necessary.

And then twenty long years later came the result, written over several months in 2018, then laboriously typed up and the precious manuscript only properly finished at the beginning of 2020. And then it took more than another four years to finally see the light of day: on the 15th April 2024. Too late, sadly, for my most enthusiastic believer, Philip Townsend – and also – equally sadly – too late for my brother Harry (though God knows what he would have made of it; it may well have given him the heebie-jeebies!). However, I made sure the book included a testimony to “Mr Sixties” right at its beginning; although it was too late to include Harry’s untimely death as it happened less than four months before publication.

Back to the Cons though, I got distracted. Although I had made a few friends at the Scrubs and Winchester the numbers vastly increased once I got to my main establishment for actually doing my time, at Swaleside. As I have already said there is a marked distinction between an inmate on pre-sentence, ie a remand prisoner, and a sentenced one – who invariably gets shipped out to do the bulk of their time elsewhere. There was absolutely no difference between that setup in the Federal System and in the English system. Being on remand always had a kind of transient feel to it, while the place a con ends up at has a definite sense of permanence about it, whatever the length of sentence.

I was at Swaleside, that large, B Cat prison in a 3-place prison complex on that curious, swampy Isle of Sheppey on the southern edge of the Thames estuary, hugging the coast of the ancient county of Kent, for nearly two years – September 1997 to June 1999 – so it was little wonder I made so many more friends there. And acquaintances too; not everyone who made a difference to my time was a positive influence; a very few were malign (only to be expected in that kind of environment, naturally), but the vast majority were good people, just as they had been back in Kentucky a decade earlier. In fact it is entirely thanks to that unique comradeship that helps a con get through his “porridge” that much easier.

One of the first people I got to know was the well-known wheeler-dealer YINKA. This was the principal go-to individual if you needed anything like an extra blanket of pillow. Or more arcane stuff like the secretive buying of code numbers on specialised phone cards, which enabled us to get free phone time – prized possessions indeed. Yinka was the connection at Swaleside. Yet this crafty but ever-smiling Nigerian of all the talents was also instrumental in buying lost souls and then transferring them to the local soldiers of Islam. I watched as a good friend from my own spur, Julian, was taken down this road by one of the Islamist gangs just beginning to spread their wings around this time. They were starting to get their grips into unsuspecting, naive mainly young people lost in life, to groom them into joining this already evolving phenomenon. Since Yinka and his ilk had a significant say in this I couldn’t really classify him as a friend.

It was across from A wing where I was first sent (and where Yinka and others like him lived) where I made the majority of my friends there: on B wing. Over there on “the Ones” (at basement level actually) was where they planned to hold the very first Kairos course at Swaleside, and it was one of three Colombians who had arrived shortly before who persuaded me to join them. And to hopefully become their (unofficial) interpreter. This was HUMBERTO SUAREZ, from Tolima near Bogotá. He was a true born-again Christian, made to measure for the course which was unapologetically evangelist – just as he was himself. Among several others there, signed up for it. There were 42 of us in number, and I was the final one to sign up for what became Kairos 1.

Humberto proved to be quite a complex character; but beneath all those innocent smiles was a cool manipulator, who knew exactly how to get his own way. In the end though, people discovered what he was really like. As for me he only strengthened my own conviction, based on long experience, that religious fanatics are usually hypocritical and shallow when all is said and done.

His “tocayo” (namesake), HUMBERTO DELGADO from Manizles, was a very different prospect altogether. He never professed to be religious, fancying himself as a kind of budding wheeler-dealer who happened to get hold of a lot of watches and then sell them on. But he ran into so many problems with this unstable scheme that he found he had no one but me to keep running to, expecting me to extricate him from one dilemma after another. He never learned his lesson, and worse still (for me!) he never learned English. Except to say “no good.” I tried to help by way of translating and mediating, but usually found myself swimming against the current. Yet when he put his mind to it he could rustle up a decent old Colombian meal, “casero” style … wholesome home cooking.

The third native of Colombia on the Kairos course was from Cúcuta, and became my best friend there, the equivalent of Edgar in the US. JUANCHO CAMPERO had that Indian look about him and was a smart cookie alright. We noticed we had a lot in common, especially good humour and a naturally adventurous spirit, which helped draw us together. Juan was cool, calm and collected under pressure, and used to tell me about his varied exploits smuggling a few kilos over the border into Venezuela, since he had the run of all that region around Cúcuta, which sits exactly on the border.

And he made no secret of the plans he had in mind for expanding operations once he got back home! And he had a beautiful wife, Olga, whose photo on his cell wall I often admired, and to whom he introduced me a couple of times on the phone. I never got to meet her nor liaise with him over there after I was released, but I had certainly intended to. I helped him with English tuition and how to give up smoking; he helped me simply by being my best buddy in the place. Like me, he called a spade a spade, and had not the slightest interest in religious affairs. His nice little sideline was renting out sex magazines on a weekly basis, a huge improvement on trying to flog watches – or save souls like the two Humbertos. So they became the Three Musketeers, with yours truly as D’Artagnan!

Another of my earliest friends on B wing, and my spur in particular, turned out to be, in my opinion – and many other peoples’ – among the best people there. That was because he was always ready and willing to help or encourage one and all, and in fact used to hold impromptu meetings in his cell, which was the one at the end. This was a character know as STAN THE MAN, and was out of those southeast suburbs where Kent also started, and knew all the villains from those manors. On one celebrated occasion after I gave a personal speech highlighting the turning points in my life he wrote a long, descriptive poem dedicated to me – which I treasured a great deal.

Two other friends, also from my own spur, were PAUL Q and BARRY. Paul had been there from the start, was mildly religious but more of a moralist, and used to send a lot of his hard-earned wages to his adored lady friend in Ghana. Barry, though a helpful type epitomised, gradually began to milk Paul dry as well, since the innocent-seeming Barry turned out yet another smooth operator, whose crime had been a series of frauds, mainly in Thailand. Barry was a jack of all trades; he knew plumbing and carpentry, painting and electrics, and everything else in between. But he was also, and principally, a con artist par excellence!

Paul, on the other hand, had little to offer except his interest in politics. He was also quite posh and got a taste for power. He had an unlikeable tendency to get over-emotional about most things, and things began to fall apart for him when he made an unwise bid for the presidency of K1. It was then that his former best pal Barry began to bully him mercilessly. Paul happened to be a dab hand at cooking and was the founder of our particular “food boat” of which Suarez and I were the other main members. But another bad habit Paul had, which eventually turned a lot of people against him was his habit of getting much too close to the officials and screws. No one was willing to tolerate that!

Then there was little WARREN CHAMBERS, a youngster out of the East End, a simple soul who just happened to suffer a great deal for the reason he was there – and a lifer as well, one of four there. His crime was to push another youngster off the balcony of a high-rise tower block over Leyton way. But when he told us all his story there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. To most of us the verdict and sentence were a clear case of gross misjustice.

Warren proved an invaluable friend, full of fun and laughter who invariably joined in with my olé olés every time England or my team Arsenal won an important match. Warren was always my welcome and entertaining echo in my own enthusiasm. We used to chorus those wild celebrations at top volume! But Warren’s extrovert persona was a cover for his acute, inner suffering – because our gallant Warren was really a depressive in disguise. I always thought, despite his incredible cheerfulness, that little Warren was probably not that far off a nervous breakdown.

Not everyone was so jolly and good-hearted though. There were also a handful of cynics and serial complainers, chief of whom was without doubt the East End villain of around my age known as TINKER. A true son of Stepney, he seemed to exist there solely to sow dissent and then stir up the proverbial. He had a few faithful followers who did his bidding, although one by one they got themselves expelled from the course. But Tinker continued his campaign anyway, until he was the last man standing.

His acolytes were mainly young lost souls who looked upon him as a kind of father figure, though he struck me more as a malevolent pied piper just out to make trouble. And trouble he certainly caused – in spades. In the final event he won some sort of jackpot to get sent to an open prison just down the road, the same place Paul Q and a few others also got sent to. Paul had become Tinker’s last and most renowned victim of relentless bullying, though he wouldn’t buckle under. Paul held his ground against all the odds, having to combat both Tinker and Barry at the same time.

The intimidation was persistent and ugly indeed – and all this during the best efforts of religious types dedicated to trying to get us to see the error of our ways. But there are always some, like Tinker, who think they know it all better themselves so just cannot change. It was this Tinker, incidentally, who filled me in about the course even before it actually got underway. He made no pretence of the cynical way in which he intended to dominate it. He was “in it to win it” he told me right from the start, and I could see for myself how right he had judged it all along. If you want to guarantee parole then join Kairos, he told us all. And he was proved right. He advised me to take a leaf out of his book by playing the long game from the outset. He was a true atheist till the bitter end, but more importantly trouble-maker in chief. There’s always one of them wherever you go!

BIG BIRD, denizen of rough old Harlesden, was an ardent evangelist of the old school, though also another victim of Tinker’s intimidation. He was an ambling giant though, who loved nothing more than to consume his joint or three per day while preaching his beloved bible to whoever would listen. His rich, melodious tones would dominate the entire space so his sermons were legendary. Tinker tried to pull them apart but Big Bird wasn’t worried about that. He was a gentleman by comparison and one of the favourites of everybody there. I can never forget one occasion when the famous heavyweight champ Frank Bruno came to visit, and Bird actually sparred with him, two giants together! The shambling Jamaican son of one of London’s most notorious ghettos, synonymous with crack cocaine, won our hearts and minds. I think it should have been either he or Stan the Man who would have made the best president. He also just happened to be my top student in the Spanish classes! But his best lesson to us all was how to keep one’s calm in the face of adversity.

JOHNNY OLA and SKINNY GORDON were two more lifers on the “Kairos base” but completely different, apart from their propensity for argument. Johnny was aggressive by nature; volatile and loud-mouthed, seemingly at all times prepared to fight his corner and never surrender. He steadfastly refused to tell us a single thing about his crime, though I think most of us felt he had murdered a few people, as that was the common perception of the man. Gordon, on the other hand, was a born-again Christian of the steeliest type; he was the first among us to volunteer to tell us his story, and he was also the con who had already done the most time among us, around 18 years by then I think. So he thought he had earned the right to lord it over everyone else. Both he and Ola ruled the TVs on their respective spurs with a rod of iron. Gordon also had the reputation of staying in his cell reading the whole time, and woe betide anyone fool enough to disturb him.

Johnny Ola was the same in the tiny kitchen, and in fact the big, burly, intimidating Nigerian thought he was the king of the kitchen, and in fact ran his successful little business from it, baking his various cakes for different special occasions at £10 each. And they were masterpieces: throughout HMP Swaleside he was known as The Cake Man. Gordon, on the other hand, told us all how he had been an enforcer for a little drugs crew in Northampton, when he was ordered to shut a snitch up – on a permanent basis. So he did … hence his status as lifer. I wonder if either are out by now?

DOMINIC was a good old Polish Catholic who held his own in the face of such a lot of muscular evangelism. This gentleman, with his odd, wispy beard, was an enigma, who seemed an oasis of benign culture in a world gone mad. He was an expert in classical music, in history, in architecture and in art. Like Barry he appeared to know everything better than anyone else there, only he was a while lot more subtle than the fraudster-in-chief. Dominic also attended my Spanish classes though he unexpectedly dropped out early on. I think he somehow resented Big Bird fast becoming the star pupil, or else he resented me actually giving the classes. Either way I remember being genuinely surprised – and rather shocked by his ungentlemanly attitude. But he was a likeable person nevertheless, and one who tried to help others as well.

The young, innocent con from the East End, Forest Gate if I’m not mistaken, though originated on his adored little Caribbean island of St Kitts where he said his mother was waiting for him to come back. JULIAN DOLCIE was a truly lost soul, though a devout Christian of the more quiet type, nothing at all like all the vociferous proselytisers among us. He loved art and specialised in funky spacecraft. But he tragically fell victim to the shadowy Islamist gangs beginning to make waves at the time. Yinka had something to do with it, and slowly but surely poor Julian succumbed. He confided his dilemma in me, and I tried to help him resist the ever-tightening pressure. But then one day he just appeared in the shiny white robes of his new faith. Julian, however, never really renounced his natural, soft Christianity, and I like to think he made it back to St Kitts in the end. While he was a fully fledged Muslim by the way, he was made to give up painting spaceships. Eventually he gave up painting altogether.

HUGHIE was the youngest of us all only eighteen years old, but who also fell into the clutches of Tinker and his entourage. He was a simple soul from Kent itself, but his mind was already weakening, and we all saw it weakening a log more. The next step down for youngsters in such a situation is always drugs – and poor Hughie was no exception. He told us his own peculiar story one day, and I thought something like that could only happen to someone like Hughie! In the end they came to transfer him to Britain’s oldest prison of all: the windswept, rather forlorn Dartmoor, down in deepest (darkest) Devon. Most probably its psychiatric wing, we thought. Yes, Hughie had finally lost the plot, but while he was with us he was a bundle of fun like Warren, irrepressible and genuine, popular and quite inoffensive.

Almost as prolific a complained as Tinker was, so was WEE DAVY. This diminutive product of the very worst streets of Glasgow, also known as Scotch Davy, was a real live wire out to create havoc, just as the great man Tinker did. His father had been Ukrainian, which is why nobody could pronounce his surname, but Davy was a product of the meanest, most extreme faction of the Orange Order one could possibly imagine. He relished an old reputation as a swaggering and ultra-violent football thug, extolling the virtues of his sacred Gers while beating up Papists wherever he and his bully boys found them.

Short of stature, he regaled me with countless stories of those glory days, especially as I made clear my interest in Glasgow, and in particular also having a soft spot for Rangers, disliking Celtic intensely as I did – though not nearly as much as Davy did! But the authorities had a little surprise up their sleeve when the very long R&R parole course began. Davy was in it as well, and I was requested to sit next to him in order to exert a helpful hand over him, as he was fully expected to wreck the course. Which is what he single-handedly set out to do! I did attempt to curb his enthusiasm for chaos, but only half-succeeded I think. Nevertheless he stayed till the bitter end, actually improving somewhat.

He could also be found on most mornings in the queue for the pharmacy there, as Davy seemed to suffer from every ailment in the book; and even many not in the book! Eventually the sent him off up the road to Glasgie, to an accumulated period of several weeks at the formidable HMP Barlinnie for a whole load of visits north of the border. When he eventually returned he did seem a little more normal, if anything. Wee Davie was a habitual street dealer in East London of coke, crack and God knows what else, a small time drug dealer personified. But he certainly made his mark at Swaleside, although not in a salutary way at all. Just like there’s always a Tinker present so there is also a Wee Davy!

Just like Hernan Botero at Ashland poured endless scorn on the American system so Davy did with respects to the English. Both were what might be termed as hardcore!

The fourth of our four lifers was a proper character, wise and humorous – but quite quite mad. DAVE WREN was his name, but he always went under the moniker of Chelsea Dave. From West London, as his nickname suggested, this person was quite unique at the place, surrounded as he undoubtedly was by a whole bunch of other unique individuals! But Dave took this to the next level. I loved his sardonic way and his natural born expertise in his chosen speciality of writing haikus – those nifty little Japanese three liners of seven syllables, or so he described this art form to me. So I began to write haikus as well, though never submitted half as many as Dave did. He had submitted so many in fact that he had already won no end of competitions and prizes of all descriptions, and recommended me to do the same. So he submitted mine as well. I didn’t actually win anything – but I could have done I suppose,

In addition were two loveable rogues on my spur, who usually conspired to dominate our spur TV with their legendary and contagious love of English football. They turned the commentary down, giving the matches their own inimitable commentaries – which definitely sounded even more professional than the official ones, and far more entertaining! What the Rasta Londoner, ex drug dealer and his clean-cut pal who spoke with an American deep-south accent as he had spent several years living in Atlanta, Georgia didn’t know about the English Premier League wasn’t worth knowing.

GARFIELD and ADRIAN entertained us like nobody else did, and I really did miss this jaunty pair when they left the spur at the end of K1. They certainly helped to make my time just that much more enjoyable. I do think they could have made a passable professional pair of football commentators; more humorous versions of Gary Lineker long before Gary even started on the box; in fact he had already come to the end of his illustrious playing days .. and as we were doing our time was probably just starting to hone his skills as top commentator. Garfield and Adrian could have given him some handy tips!

And finally, there was a character who had nothing to do with Kairos at all, though he still resided on B Wing. But up on the Threes, although if was from the library that I knew my good friend, BIG FRANKIE. He was from Forest Gate, as Julian was, and had been an ordinary street crook on the outside, probably a well-respected one in his particular area – as he most certainly was on B Wing and in the library too of course. He became an even more avid student of my Spanish classes than Big Bird – though Frank’s classes were private – in fact he reminded me of myself back in 1978 trying desperately to learn as much as I could before my second trip to Colombia, ending up specialising in the verbs and all their tenses. Frankie was an expert as well, dominating the verbs in Spanish most heroically!

But he always maintained he wouldn’t be seen dead on the Kairos base, having a very poor opinion indeed of it. We actually enjoyed many a profound philosophical discussion, the same going for another from that wing but who lived on the “twos”: one CARLOS from Bogotá. During my final months there he invited me and other Colombians into his cell for dinner, which he rustled up in the kitchen on the “twos”. As did Humberto Delgado too. I often walked or jogged around the large yard with Frankie or Carlos or both, times I shall always remember and cherish of my time at HMP Swaleside. My friends and acquaintances there Last but by no means least was the man elected our first ever president of the Kairos base at Swaleside, the personable and knowledgeable DAVID S. But this pseudo-politician had us all fooled from Day One. He did, however, put forward a decent argument in his campaign against the odious Benson but that was when people still believed in him. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, this man began to change, his mask began to slip. In the final event he was suddenly exposed for what he really was, but by then it was too late to do anything about it as he got suddenly ghosted out one early dawn. We could only speculate after that. were legion, as I hope I have shown. As they were at Winchester as well. And as they had been a decade previously in Los Angeles and Ashland, Ky!

How the man managed to hold onto the presidency for do long beggared belief. Mind you, Barry had suspected him for a long time and tried to alert us all, but to no avail. About halfway through Paul took it upon himself to challenge him, but president David weathered the storm. He simply soldiered on regardless. I remember on one occasion when this proud Sierra Leonian fell out with Johnny Ola, he answered the big Nigerian back with some choice language, of the type to make an old sailor blush! His mask slipped altogether that day. I learned a valuable lesson from this entire episode, and think everyone did: you can never judge a book by its cover! President David S was a fraud from the start, he conned us all including the authorities. Well, it was jail after all!