Lags’ hero Huhne picks up new Twix

WHiLe Vicky Pryce has been transferred from harsh Holloway in North London to an open jail in the Kent countryside, her former husband Chris Huhne has adjusted surprisingly well in the less salubrious accommodation offered by Wandsworth prison.

indeed, far from facing the opprobrium of fellow inmates who might relish having a disgraced minister in their midst, Huhne has been given a warm welcome — and even received gifts of chocolate bars, i am told.

According to self- styled ‘ Lord’ eddie Davenport, who is serving nearly eight years for his part in a £4.5 million fraud, Huhne has been treated with considerable respect.

‘You’d think he would be getting a bad time from all the men in here, some of whom are very serious gangsters,’ Davenport told a visitor to the prison this week.

‘But you would be quite wrong. it’s astonishing. everybody feels rather sorry for him, plus he has also become a bit of a hero figure.

‘that’s because there is a lot of macho posturing in here and everyone sticks together when it comes to a case, such as his, involving a woman who they think has behaved badly by getting revenge on a man. that’s how they view what happened to him.

‘everybody wants to have their picture taken with him.’

Playboy conman Davenport — who was the ‘ringmaster’ of a vast scam in which cash-strapped entrepreneurs, including designer elizabeth emanuel and fashionable cobbler Patrick Cox, were duped into handing over cash for ‘due diligence’ checks in return for investments that never materialised — adds: ‘You could describe it as male bonding. everyone has been nice to Chris, making cheery comments and giving him stuff.

‘You are not allowed to bring much in with you so people have been sorting him out with deodorant, soap, aftershave — things like that. they have also been offering to get him little extras from the canteen that improve life a bit, like twix bars.’

the two men met in the prison’s reception area. ‘i said: “Hello Chris, i’m eddie Davenport,” and he said: “Hello, i know who you are!” ’

Adds Davenport: ‘it’s nice to have him here — we all know what it’s like when a woman turns. He’s not in his own clothes like most of us but in a grey prison tracksuit which you get to start with.

‘He’s also in a cell to himself, but we hear that he’s due to be transferred somewhere else less secure soon.’