Five years ago, Christmas 2020, Covid time. I’d just turned 38 and was in desperately bad shape. I’d barely gone outside during lockdown and had lost all the muscle I’d once had. When I tried to run I discovered I couldn’t go 100 metres without getting out of breath. I knew this wasn’t good enough. With the new year round the corner my thoughts, like those of many people, turned to fitness resolutions. This will be the year I get in shape, I promised myself. But there was something which made my situation unusual. I was in prison.
In 2014 I did a stupid, dishonest thing. I was in discussions with a private equity firm about starting a corporate finance company together when I lied about the fees I’d generated from clients. I subsequently presented a fake schedule of fees to support that lie. In doing these things I committed a fraud. Four years later the truth came out. In early 2019 I pleaded guilty in the crown court. But it was not until February 6, 2020, that I was finally sentenced to 45 months’ imprisonment.
I began my time as a prisoner at London’s infamous HMP Wandsworth. I was in horrendous shape. I had responded badly to the long, stressful wait for sentencing by drinking and eating far too much and doing almost no exercise. As a result I weighed 120kg when I arrived at Wandsworth. A few weeks after I arrived at the jail, the first Covid lockdown was announced and, consequently, I spent most days locked in my tiny cell, barely moving. But the food at Wandsworth was terrible, limited and contained almost no protein, so the weight still fell off me.
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It was just before Christmas 2020 when I finally got my “transfer” to Hollesley Bay, an “open prison” on the Suffolk coast, near Rendlesham Forest and Orford Ness. Open, or category D, jails are very different from what most people imagine a prison to be. Hollesley Bay, spread across 85 acres of fields and scrubby woodlands, has no wall or high fences. Prisoners live in accommodation blocks more like 1980s provincial university halls of residence than a typical prison wing. I lived in Stow House, a low, wide building with a communal eating and lounge area, a laundry room, and four “spurs”, corridors with half a dozen rooms down both sides. We each had a key to our own room and weren’t even locked in at night. Also, unlike at Wandsworth, I had plenty of time outside if I wanted. Sometimes it almost didn’t feel like prison.
In normal circumstances we’d also have been able to go on “town leave” and “home leave”, opportunities to leave the prison and see our families for a few hours or even overnight. But this was during Covid so we were confined to the 85 acres.
On my first day at the jail they weighed me. Just over 80kg. Somehow I’d lost a third of my weight in a year. For the first time in decades I looked in the mirror and thought I could do with putting some weight on. Unfortunately, although I was thin, I wasn’t fit. As people are now learning with weight-loss jabs such as Mounjaro, dramatic weight loss doesn’t discriminate between fat and muscle. Soon after my arrival I tried to run outside. I hadn’t gone 100 metres before I had to stop, gasping, lungs burning, legs shaking.
A sign at HMP Hollesley Bay
GEOGRAPHY PHOTOS/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES
That was my wake-up call. I’d promised myself I’d leave prison in better shape than I arrived. I knew that by Christmas 2021 I’d be out. I had to start training; I had to get fit. At least I had time — there’s always time in prison. I also had 85 acres to run around. And then I found someone to help me.
“Charlie” was my neighbour, occupying the room opposite mine. He was tall — I’m 6ft 1in and he towered over me — and incredibly fit, muscles untroubled by a hint of fat. He would do hundreds of press-ups and sit-ups as though they were nothing. Charlie always led our spur in workouts, encouraging the other men, cheering them on as they struggled to complete exercises he found trivial.
When I mentioned my plans to get fit, Charlie offered to run with me. He never complained when I stopped to walk, even though he hadn’t broken a sweat and even if it was the tenth time that day. We’d run until I was out of breath, walk until I’d recovered and then run again. Through that cold, snowy winter we trained together every day. When I didn’t want to go out, when the cold and wet deterred me, Charlie was kind but insistent. He wouldn’t let me slack.
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In the early weeks I wasn’t fit enough to speak while running so Charlie did most of the talking. I learnt about his dreadful life before prison, how he’d dropped out of education at 12. And how, as Charlie said, “jail saved me. I got clean, got fit, and got educated” — for he was now studying for a degree.
I had felt that my life was over when I went to prison. I couldn’t see what future I’d be able to build. As I ran with Charlie I found that each day became a little easier than the last. By the time the snowdrops appeared I was running twice a day and studying for a creative writing MA. I began to feel that I would eventually leave prison — and my crime — behind and that I might build a new future for myself. After all, Charlie’s life had been vastly harder than mine and he had forged himself anew.
At Easter lockdown began to relax and “town leave” returned. For the men at Hollesley Bay this meant the first chance to see our loved ones since before Covid. And so on a bright spring day in May 2021, I saw my parents for the first time in over a year.
They were astonished when they saw me. I’d forgotten how fat, how bloated I’d been when I saw them last. We walked in Rendlesham Forest and then went for lunch in the garden of a nearby gastropub. My father had always been very fit, regularly playing cricket, golf and squash, but over lockdown he’d stopped exercising so for the first time in many years I could gently tease him about needing to get in shape. It must have worked. He went on to play cricket for the England over-70s team, touring Australia for a seniors’ Ashes.
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The last few months at Hollesley Bay passed and soon I was out in the world again. I moved to a quiet corner of Wales, got a dog and ran in woods and up hills every day. It was harder to maintain my fitness out of prison. The real world has far more distractions.
Then in 2023 I was blessed with a daughter and, like many new parents, my fitness fell off a cliff. So now it’s January 2026. I’m not in quite as bad shape as five years ago, and I can definitely run more than 100 metres, but I’m also carrying far more fat than I’d like. So I’ve decided that in 2026 I’m going to remember Charlie, remember Hollesley Bay, remember how good it felt to run twice a day, and get fit again.