A bare-knuckle boxer jailed for using a phone while in prison gave an interview to a YouTuber from behind bars at Strangeways.

Brett May apparently used a mobile phone inside a cell at HMP Manchester to record a piece for the Not Guilty TV channel. In April the then 35-year-old, from Doncaster, South Yorks, was jailed for five years for a string of offences, including intimidating a witness, harassment and sending images on a phone while inside prison.

Under UK law, inmates are not permitted to give video interviews to the media. Unauthorised recording or streaming is also illegal, as is possessing a mobile phone. Face-to-face and phone interviews are allowed, but only in very specific circumstances and with the permission of the prison governor.

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Described as an ‘exclusive prison interview’, the video, entitled ‘Brett May breaks silence from HMP Strangeways’, has been watched almost 30,000 times. Asked by the interviewer ‘Where are you right now?’, May, who appears alongside an inmate who gives his name as Johnny Harman, replies: “Just in Strangeways bro… in the penthouse’.

In the interview, which May uses to promote an upcoming fight, he claims: “I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been shot and no-one’s ever got a statement out of me mate.” He also sends a message to ‘all the grasses out there’.

“You think I give a f*** about jail?,” he says. “I can sit in here rest my life, but please believe me without no threat. People better stay safe. Whoever’s disrespecting me or grassing me up and that is a f****** fact, cos something will happen.”

The boxer also tells how he now wants to ‘go straight’ on his release.

“We want to go out and do the right thing… I’ve been out jail all my life since 14 years old,” he says. “This guy here has been in jail just under the 15 stretch. We want to do things right. Set a good example for kids, for children out there because we’ve all got families and we want to do things the right way.

“We’re not bad people. You know what I mean? We’ve made mistakes. We’ve done bad things. But the only people what we’ve ever done wrong to is known criminals who’ve done jail before for serious violence.”

May apparently gave the interview from inside Strangeways(Image: Vincent Cole / MEN)

In April, inspectors said conditions at Strangeways had barely improved 18 months after a scathing report described it as ‘appalling’ and called it one of the most violent prisons in the UK. Despite being given an urgent warning to improve, HMP Manchester ‘remained in a precarious state’ with drug use and violence still rife, the report found.

Large quantities of drugs and other illicit items such as mobile phones were being smuggled via drones through broken windows allowing organised crime gangs to ‘operate with impunity’, inspectors said.

It’s not the first time May has given an interview to Not Guilty TV seemingly from behind bars. In January the channel posted a phone interview with May, apparently from inside HMP Hull. In 2018 the Sheffield, Star reported how May was ‘left for dead’ after a knife attack which left needing 85 stitches.

In February last year, the Doncaster Free Press reported how a fight between May and fellow boxer Danny Christie, due to take place at Barnsley’s Metrodome, was called off following police concerns amid a ‘war of words’ between the fighters and their supporters.

After being shown footage of the interview a Prison Service spokesperson said the matter had been investigated internally and reported to YouTube. They added: “Contraband has no place in prisons – it undermines security, facilitates criminality, and can cause harm to victims and the public. We are investing around £75 million in physical security measures to clamp down on illicit items and those who break prison rules can face extra time behind bars.”