They remove their shoes and put on slippers as they enter the hospital, and no smoking or swearing is tolerated. Two of them will be leaving us next week, Keith will have served five years, and Brian nearly three. We raise a cup to them and wish them luck. Carl and David stay behind to help me with the washing-up.

DAY 187 - MONDAY 21 JANUARY 2002.

730 am I'm becoming aware of the hospital regulars: five prisoners who turn up every morning between 7.30 and 8 am to collect their medication. I couldn't work out why these five need the same medication for something most of us would recover from in a few days.

Sister has her suspicions, but if a prisoner complains of toothache, muscle sprain or arthritis, they are ent.i.tled to medications that are opiate based for example codeine, co-codamol or dextropropoxyphene. These will show up as positive on any drugs test, and if a prisoner has been on them every day for a month, they can then claim, 'It's my medication, guv.' However, if an inmate tests positive for heroin, the hospital will take a blood sample and seek medical advice as to whether his daily medication would have registered that high. Several prisoners have discovered that such an element of doubt often works in their favour. Doug tells me that some addicts return to their rooms, flush the pills down the lavatory and then take their daily dose of heroin.

11.20 am A lifer called Bob (twelve years, murder) is due to appear in front of the parole board next week. He's coming to the end of his tariff, and the Home Office usually recommends that the prisoner serves at least another two years before they will consider release. This decision has recently been taken out of the hands of the Home Office and pa.s.sed to the parole board. Bob received a letter from the board this morning informing him he will be released next Thursday.

Try to imagine serving twelve years (think what age you were twelve years ago) and now a.s.sume that you will have to do another two years, but then you're told you will be released on Thursday.

The man is walking around in a daze, not least because he fell off a ladder yesterday and now has his ankle in a cast. What a way to start your re-entry back to Earth.

DAY 188 - TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2002.

11.00 am Andrew Pierce of The Times has got hold of the story that Libby Purves will be interview-ing Mary tomorrow. The BBC must have leaked it, but I can't complain because the piece reads well, even if Mr Pierce is under the illusion that NSC is in Cambridgeshire. I only wish it were.

4.00 pm Among my afternoon post is a Valentine's card, which is a bit like getting a Christmas card in November, one proposal of marriage, one offer of a film part (Field Marshall Haig), a request to front a twelve-part television series and an invitation to give an after-dinner speech in Sydney next September. Do they know something I don't?

8.00 pm An officer drops in from his night rounds for a coffee. He tells me an alarming story about an event that took place at his last prison.

It's universally accepted among prisoners that if one particular officer has got it in for you, there's nothing you can do about it. You can go through the complaints procedure, but even if you're in the right, officers will always back each other up if a colleague is in trouble. I could fill a book with such instances. I have experienced this myself at such a petty level that I have not considered the incident worth recording. On that occasion, the governor personally apologized, but still advised me not to put in a complaint.

However, back to a prisoner from the north block who did have the temerity to put in a written complaint about a particular officer. On this occasion, I can only agree with the prisoner that the officer concerned is a bully. Nevertheless, after a lengthy enquiry (everything in prison is lengthy) the officer was cleared of any misdemeanour, but that didn't stop him seeking revenge.

The inmate in question was serving a fiveyear sentence, and at the time he entered prison was having an affair that his wife didn't know about, and to add to the complication, the affair was with another man.

The prisoner would have a visit from one of them each fortnight, while writing to both of them during the week. The rule in closed prisons is that you leave your letters unsealed in the unit office, so they can be read by the duty officer to check if you're still involved in any criminal activity, or asking for drugs to be sent in. When the prisoner left his two letters in the unit office, the officer on duty was the same man he had made a complaint about to the governor. The officer read both the love letters, and yes, you've guessed it, switched them and sealed the envelopes and with it, the fate of the prisoner.

How do I know this to be true? Because the officer involved has just told me, and is happy to tell anyone he considers a threat.

DAY 189 - WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2002.

9.00 am Mary is on Midweek with Libby Purves.

12.15 pm I call Mary. She's off to lunch with Ken Howard RA and other artistic luminaries.

2.00 pm My visitors today are Michael Portillo and Alan Jones (Australia's John Humphreys). I must first make my position clear on Michael's leadership bid. I would have wanted him to follow John Major as leader of the party. I would also have voted for him to follow William Hague, though I would have been torn if Malcolm Rifkind had won back his Edinburgh seat.

It is a robust visit, and it serves to remind me how much I miss the cut and thrust of Westminster, stuck as I am in the coldest and most remote corner of Lincolnshire. Michael tells us about one or two changes he would have made had he been elected leader.

We need our own 'Clause 4' he suggests, which Tony Blair so brilliantly turned into an important issue, despite it being of no real significance. Michael also feels that the party's parliamentary candidates should be selected from the centre, taking power away from the const.i.tuencies. It also worries him how few women and member of minority groups end up on the Conservative benches.

He points out that at the last election, the party only added one new woman to its ranks, at a time when the Labour party have over fifty.

'Not much of an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the new, all-inclusive, modern party,' he adds.

'But how would you have handled the European issue?' ask Alan.

Michael is about to reply when that redhot socialist (local Labour councillor) Officer Hart tells us that our time is up.

Politics is not so overburdened with talent that the Conservatives can survive without Portillo, Rifkind, Hague, Clarke and Redwood, all playing important roles, especially while we're in opposition.

When the two men left I was buzzing. An hour later I wanted to abscond.

5.00 pm I call Mary. She has just left the chambers of Julian Malins QC, and is going to dinner with Leo Rothschild.

DAY 191 - FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2002.

8.15 am I'm called out of breakfast over the tannoy and instructed to return to the hospital immediately. Five new prisoners came in last night after Gail had gone home. She needs all the preliminaries carried out (heart rate, weight, height) before Dr Walling arrives at nine. One of the new intake announces with considerable pride that although this is his fifth offence, it's his first visit to NSC.

10.30 am Once surgery is over, Dr Walling joins me for a coffee on the ward. 'One of them was a nightmare,' he says, as if I wasn't 'one of them'. He doesn't tell me which of the twenty patients he was referring to, and I don't enquire. However, his next sentence did take me by surprise. 'I needed to take a blood sample and couldn't find a vein in his arms or legs, so I ended up injecting his p.e.n.i.s.

He's not even half your age, Jeffrey, but you'll outlive him.'

2.00 pm The new vacuum cleaner has arrived. This is a big event in my life.

4.00 pm I call Mary at Grantchester. She has several pieces of news; Brian Mawhinney has received a reply to his letter to Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, asking why I lost my D-cat and was sent to Wayland. A report on the circ.u.mstances surrounding that decision has been requested, and will be forwarded to Brian as soon as the commissioner receives it.

Mary's next piece of news is devastating.

Back in 1999, Julian Mallins had kindly sent a note he had retained in his files (see overleaf), sent to him by Geoffrey Shaw, junior to Michael Hill for the defence in the libel trial. In the note, Shaw asks Julian for my two diaries for 1986 (an A4 diary and an Economist diary) 'in case Michael asks to look at them'. Julian pa.s.sed the diaries to Shaw and Hill for inspection, and told Mary he is pretty sure that they would have gone through them thoroughly and clearly found nothing worthy of comment in them, since they were not an issue in the libel trial.

Julian added that it would be 'absolute rubbish' to suggest that the Star's lawyers could not have examined these two diaries (which Angela Peppiatt had claimed in the criminal trial were almost entirely blank) in court for other entries.

Later Julian wrote to Mary: 'English law in 1986 was not an a.s.s. If it had been Michael Hill's suggestion that the alibi evidence was all true, except for the date, neither Lord Archer in the witness box nor the judge, still less Lord Alexander nor I, could have objected to Michael Hill going through the rest of the diary to find the same dinner date with the same companion at the same restaurant but on another date.'

None of us had known anything of Peppiatt's pocket diary for 1986, in which she noted both her own and my engagements, kept as her own property for over ten years, but produced in court as my 'true' diary for that year.

Mary also tells me that she has written to G.o.dfrey Barker about his earlier reference to dining with Mr Justice Potts some time before the trial, when the judge might have made disparaging remarks about me. She now fears G.o.dfrey will disappear the moment the date of the appeal is announced.

DAY 192 - SAt.u.r.dAY 26 JANUARY 2002.

10.00 am I weigh myself. Yuk. I'm fourteen stone two pounds. Yuk. I lost eleven pounds during my three weeks at Belmarsh, falling to twelve stone seven pounds. At Wayland I put that eleven pounds back on in ten weeks, despite being in the gym every day. At NSC the food is better, but because of my job I don't have time to go to the gym (poor excuse). On Monday I must stop eating chocolate and return to the gym. I am determined to leave the prison, whenever, around twelve stone eight pounds.

1.00 pm I have a visit from an inmate who was sentenced to three months, which means he'll serve around five or six weeks. His crime?

The theft of 120 while in a position of trust.

He was a policeman. I am not going into much detail about his crime, as I'm more interested in the problems a police officer faces when being sent to jail. He's remarkably frank.

On his arrival, he was placed in the north block, and within minutes recognized a drug dealer he'd arrested in the past. He reported this to Mr Hughes, the unit officer, and was immediately placed in segregation overnight.

The duty governor had to make a decision the following morning as to which one to ship out. He chose the drug dealer, as he had recently proved positive for an MDT. The policeman was put back on the north block, given a job in the kitchen and told to keep his head down. That was a week ago. So far no one else has recognized him, but he still has two weeks to serve.

Incidentally, he was originally charged with stealing 1,000, which, by the time the case came to court, had dwindled to 120.

However, that was three years ago, and during that time he was suspended on full pay (a little over 60,000).

The police and Prison Service don't seem to care how much taxpayers' money they spend. If either service were a private company, they would be declared bankrupt within a year. I'm not suggesting he shouldn't have been charged, but I am saying it ought not to have cost over 100,000 and taken three years to discover if he'd stolen 120.

2.00 pm I stand in the drizzle watching the prison football team do a little better than last week.

However, one of our best strikers, Jean-Noel, is called off when Mr Masters (our coach) receives a call over the intercom to say that Jean-Noel has a young lady waiting for him in the visits hall. He runs off the pitch, quickly showers and changes, and joins his girlfriend.

At the time we are 1-0 in the lead. We lose 5-1.

5.00 pm At tea I felt I had to chastise Jean-Noel for getting his priorities wrong and letting the team down. After all, surely the match was more important than seeing his girlfriend, and in any case, how could he forget that she was coming? He laughed, and explained that they'd had a row during the week, and she told him she wouldn't be turning up. She did, and we lost.

6.00 pm Another pile of letters awaits me in the hospital, including a long handwritten missive from John Major, who among other things mentions that he's heard that I'm writing a prison diary. He suggests that reporting the facts will be both interesting and informative, but he also wants to hear about my personal feelings on the issues and the people involved. He adds that he's not surprised that the public have been so supportive; he says he got far more sympathy and backing when he lost an election than when he won one.

DAY 193 - SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2002.

4.00 pm The members of Club Hospital meet for tea and biscuits. However, as Brian (ostrich farm), Keith (knowingly, etc.) and John (fraud) were released this week, and David (fraud) and Malcolm (fraud) are on town leave, our little band of miscreants has dwindled to five. We discuss whether we should ask anyone else to join the club, as if we were all attending a Conservative committee meeting; and let's face it the Conservative party seem to be suffering from a similar problem. Some of them have been released, and several more are on temporary leave. But just like prison, one must wonder just how many will in time return.

6.00 pm I spend a quiet evening reading and bringing the diary up to date.

DAY 194 - MONDAY 28 JANUARY 2002.

12.45 am The duty night officer wakes me and asks for an ice pack. I take one out of the fridge and ask if he needs any help.

'No,' he says without explanation, and dashes off.

2.15 am The same officer wakes me again when he returns accompanied by a prisoner called Davis who has a large swelling on his forehead and cuts over his face. Mr Hayes explains that the inmate has been in a fight, and the window in his door has shattered, leaving gla.s.s all over the floor. The prisoner can't remain in his room, because if he were to be injured by a piece of broken gla.s.s he could sue the Prison Service for negligence (can you believe it?).

While we make up his bed Davis tells me that the other prisoner involved in the fight was his cell-mate Smith (one of eleven Smiths currently at NSC), who has now been moved to the south block. They have shared a pad for eight months, a sort of forced marriage. Smith, who works in education, often needs to borrow cigarettes. Davis got sick of this and refused to hand over his tobacco, so Smith took a swipe at him. Davis claims he didn't retaliate, as he'd recently been up on a charge of taking marijuana and didn't need to be 'nicked' again. Once Smith had calmed down, Davis decided to leave the room. As he opened the door, Smith picked up a table leg that had broken off during the fight, and took a swipe at Davis hence the shattered gla.s.s and the cuts and bruises.

It doesn't add up, and I feel sure Davis will have refined his story by the time he comes up in front of the governor. Mind you, I'd like to hear Smith's version of what took place.

9.00 am Both prisoners involved in last night's fracas have to be pa.s.sed as fit before they come up for adjudication at ten o'clock. They sit chatting to each other like bosom buddies in the corner of the waiting room.

12 noon Over lunch I learn that the two fighting inmates have both had a fortnight's wages deducted from their pay packets to cover the damage they caused to the furniture and the broken window in their room. They also have had seven days added to their sentence. This is significant for Smith, because he was due to be released in two weeks' time. I'm told the reason they didn't get a tougher punishment was because both apologized to the governor and then to each other. They left almost holding hands.

7.00 pm I go off to the canteen to buy some Oxo cubes, Evian water, two phonecards and a tin of Princes ham. No chocolate.

Mr Blackman (the officer on duty) asks me if I want a Valentine card and produces a large selection for me to consider. They are all about a foot high in size and contain some of the worst rhyming couplets I have ever come across; more interesting is that there are just as many cards for men as for women.

I obviously don't mask my surprise because Mr Blackman sighs and says, 'If I didn't supply them in equal numbers, I'd be accused of discrimination.'

DAY 195 - TUESDAY 29 JANUARY 2002.

9.00 am Ten new prisoners who arrived from Leicester last night are waiting to see the doctor. While they sit around, one of them boasts that he can always beat any drugs test, even fool the breathalyser. Although Lee is well aware I'm writing a diary, he's still quite willing to reveal his secrets. Lee is in his midtwenties, good looking and well built.

However, after one look at the inside of his arm, there's no doubt that he's on drugs, and heaven knows what state he'll be in in ten years' time.

'How can you beat an MDT?' I ask.

'Easy,' he says, and produces a tiny bar of soap from his jeans pocket the kind you find in the washbasin of any small hotel. He breaks the soap in half, puts it in his mouth and begins to suck it as if it were a hardboiled sweet.

'What difference does that make?' I enquire.

'If I'm tested in the next few hours, my urine sample will be so cloudy that they won't be able to charge me, and they're not allowed to test me again for another twenty-eight days. By then I will have had enough time to wash everything out of my system. I can even go on taking heroin up until the twentyfourth day; it's only cannabis that takes a month to clear out of the blood stream.'

'But that can't apply to the breathalyser?'

'No,' he says, laughing, 'but I've got two ways of beating the breathalyser.' He produces three pennies from another pocket and begins to suck them. After a few moments he removes them and claims that the copper neutralizes the alcohol, and it therefore won't register.

'But what happens if the police don't give you enough time to put the coins in your mouth?'

'I can still beat them,' says Lee, 'using my special breathing technique.' Every prisoner in the waiting room is now hanging on his every word, and when the next patient is called in to see the doctor, he doesn't move, for fear of missing the final instalment.

'When the police hand you the machine to blow into,' Lee continues, aware of his captive audience, 'you pump out your chest, but you don't take a deep breath. For the next four seconds you blow in very little air, until the machine registers orange. You hand back the machine and gasp as if you've given everything. You'll get away with it because green is negative and orange is still clear. It's only the red you have to worry about, and they can't charge you once you've registered orange. And,' he goes on, 'if your eyes are blurred or vacant, I also have a way of getting over that problem. There's a product you can buy over the counter from any chemist called Z1 which was developed for clubbers to stop their eyes getting irritated by smoke.

A combination of the copper, careful breathing and Z1, and you'll never be charged.'

11.00 am One of the inmates has been put on suicide watch. He's a lad of twenty-one, five foot five, seven and a half stone and terrified of his own shadow. He's in for driving while disqualified, and will be released in two weeks' time.

He turns up at eleven to collect two new sheets and hands over two in a plastic bag because he wet them last night. While I go off to the cupboard to collect new sheets, he walks around in small circles, muttering to himself.

Gail can't be sure if it's all an act, because he's currently working on the farm and some prisoners will go to any lengths to get themselves off that detail. In fact, when he learns that he will be granted a change of job, he smiles for the first time. However, Gail can't afford to take any risks so she writes out a detailed report for the unit officer.

Suicide watch in this particular case means that an officer (Mr Jones) will have to check on the inmate every hour until all concerned are confident he is back to normal.

This usually takes two to three days. I'll keep you informed.

7.00 pm Doug has the flu and Carl is at singing practice with the 'cons and pros,' so I'm on my own for the evening.

I read a paper on the effects of heroin on children, written by Dr Simon Wills. I never imagined that Dr Wills would replace Freddie Forsyth as my bedtime reading.

DAY 196 - WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2002.

9.00 am Two new inductees arrive from Nottingham (A-cat). A young man serving four months for a driving offence tells me that on his block at Nottingham they had three suicides in three weeks, and all of them prisoners who had not yet been convicted.

The other inmate nods and tells me that he was made to share a cell with a man who was injecting himself with vinegar because he couldn't afford heroin.

DAY 197 - THURSDAY 31 JANUARY 2002.

10.00 am Mr Lewis drops in to see Linda, as it's his last official day as governor. He's handed in his keys, handcuffs, whistle, torch, ident.i.ty card and everything else that denoted his position of authority. An experience he obviously didn't enjoy. He jokes about suddenly becoming aware of afternoon television, and endless advertis.e.m.e.nts for comfortable chairs that move with the press of a b.u.t.ton, beds that change shape when you turn over and baths that you can easily get out of.

Mr Lewis smiles, says goodbye and we shake hands. I suspect that we will never meet again as we both head towards the world of zimmer frames.

11.00 am Mr McQuity, the National Health inspector, pays a visit to NSC, and leaves Linda in no doubt that he's well satisfied with the way she is running the prison hospital.

2.30 pm The press is full of stories about the problems the Prison Service is facing because of overcrowding. There are currently a maximum of 71,000 bed s.p.a.ces, and just over 70,000 of them are taken up. The Home Secretary David Blunkett has the choice of releasing people early or building more prisons. He's just announced that tagging will be extended from two months to three, with effect from 1 April. This would get me out three months early if, on appeal, my sentence is lowered by even a day.

4.00 pm Among this afternoon's inductees is a prisoner from Lincoln who has only three weeks left to serve. He hasn't stopped complaining since the moment he arrived. He's demanding a single room with a TV, and a bed-board because he suffers from a bad back. All prisoners start life at NSC in a double room, and there are several inmates who have been around for some months and still don't have a TV. And as for the bed-board, all four are out at the moment.

Within an hour of leaving the hospital, the inmate was discovered lying on his back in the car park next to the governor's car. When Mr Leighton was called to deal with the problem, he said he could see no reason why the prisoner shouldn't sleep in the car park and drove away. The inmate returned to his allocated room within the hour. He's been no trouble since.