So yesterday I found myself at Wormwood Scrubs prison, from which I'd recently seen Richard Burton released in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and behind whose gates Ronnie Barker was incarcerated in the opening titles of Porridge. The occasion was the filming of an episode of Question Time, for which I'd applied in a moment of rare passion after being infuriated by a recent episode.
It was intriguing to find oneself in jail; eating a chocolate biscuit in the prison officers' mess, having to hand in my keys, getting a rub-down search (oo-er missus), passing through a kind of airlock before entering the beautiful chapel where the show was to be filmed.
When I found out that my question - decided on minutes after arriving - was to be chosen, and that I was to be first my heart started pounding. But when the moment came and David Dimbleby said my name I got it out OK. Seeing myself on TV later that night was a bizarre but highly enjoyable experience. Does my voice really sound like that? It sounds to me like it's low, manly and oozes gravitas, not that it's mildy camp :)
I didn't really absorb that much of what Kenneth Clarke, Shami Chakrabarti, Jack Straw and Melanie Phillips said in response, or indeed to the other questions, some of which were asked by serving prisoners, but then when it comes down to it - sentences for rapists, votes for prisoners, overseas aid, etc, etc - no one really knows anything do they?
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