'Now I've got you. Take your last fucking breath because this knife is going in you. You're the bastard that slagged my cartoon off.

'Right. You keep quiet now, because most people want to keep quiet for a time before they die. If I don't get what I want, they can carry us both out in body bags.'

Charlie was making loud noises ... shouting, swearing and cursing. He was making monkey-like noises. He was acting like a crazed madman. I passed out, I think from fear and adrenalin. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness ...

'Charlie, where are you?'

'Speak when you're fucking spoken to. You talk too much.'

Charlie re-tied me in a different way. He tied my left arm to my body and to the chair, and then tied my wrists together. I was still convinced that I was going to die.

Charlie found a snooker cue and then with a bandage he began to bind the handle of the knife to the end of the cue. The result was a spear. Charlie held the spear by his side and then began marching up and down like a soldier. It was as if he was in some sort of trance.

I thought I was going to be sacrificed on the snooker table. I felt that I had to keep a rapport going with Charlie to try and save myself. He tied one end of the skipping rope around my neck and held on to the other end.

'Dance!'

I started marching and doing silly steps to keep Charlie amused. Every minute felt like an eternity. Charlie then began to sing 'I'll Never Walk Alone'.

I felt like I was being treated like a dog on a lead. Then Charlie said something to me.

'You've been my best hostage. This is the big one. You are also one of the few who hasn't physically shit himself.'

* * *

1 February 1999 is a day that will live with that man for the rest of his life. It was the day he must have prayed to God that I would not kill him.

The skipping rope went around his skinny ostrich neck and the knife went up to his face.

'You're mine, you faggot!'

The longest British prison siege in living memory had started. Hull max secure unit was mine. I was the governor.

* * *

There is no turning back the clock, but now I'm going back to the beginning. The beginning of the journey which saw me fall into the pit of no hope, trussed up like a chicken in the modern equivalent of a straitjacket, crawling like a worm across a concrete floor to eat food out of the plastic dish left for me. Being transferred from high-security jail to high-security jail at no notice. Strapped up, stark bollock naked, in a 'body-belt', hands cuffed in medieval-style metal hoops by my sides. Slipped out of the back of one prison into the back of another.

A seemingly endless journey. Sometimes in a wheelchair, like Hannibal Lecter. Not because I'm disabled, but because they wanted to keep me under control. Because I had earned the unenviable reputation as the most violent prisoner in British penal history.

Charles Bronson. Danger man. Serial hostage-taker. One-man army. Double dangerous. Twelve screws plus dogs needed to unlock him. And all looking 'hard', chewing their gum and staring. Big, tough guys. Jangling their keys. I'd like to see their faces if I met them on the outside, without their batons, without their closed-circuit TV.

Don't get me wrong. There are screws I respect, and governors, too. Fair men. Men who have given me a chance. It's been a long journey and I've met the good, the bad ̵