My pal Ferne is fine
Guard’s warning as 3 staff look after 150 inmates
FERNE McCann who is pregnant by a suspected acid attacker “is doing well”, said her reality TV pal Lydia Bright.
Lydia, 29, has spoken out in support of This Morning host Ferne, 26, who has dumped the dad of her unborn baby.
Scaffolder Arthur Collins, 24, is on remand charged with GBH with intent and throwing corrosive fluid at an East London nightclub, partially blinding two people and burning 14.
Lydia, who starred with Ferne on The Only Way Is Essex, said: “She’s got fantastic support and is doing well.”
Lydia has suffered her own heartbreak having split with Towie’s James “Arg” Argent, 29, after an eightyear relationship. He has just finished treatment at a Thai rehab centre.
She said: “We gave it one last try, I have no regrets. You can’t mould someone into being the perfect person for you.”
In her book Live, Laugh, Love Always, Lydia, out on Thursday, she wrote of her shock on discovering he had slept with Towie co-star Gemma Collins.
Lydia, who quit the show last month, also revealed how she received abusive tweets when on Towie. A PRISON guard has been recorded telling an inmate his cuts-hit jail is about to “go up like a box of dynamite”.
The warden was filmed on a hidden mobile by a fed-up lag who had been locked in his cell for a week because of a lack of staff to run his wing.
He sent footage to a pal on the outside and it was passed to the Sunday People to highlight the ongoing crisis facing Britain’s jails.
Prison bosses have launched a probe into the recording made using a smuggled handset.
He covertly filmed the officer after complaining he hadn’t been allowed a shower for eight days.
The guard suggested that was because there were just THREE staff on a wing that houses over 150. The officer said: “I’m tired of complaining, I’m tired of saying to staff this is really unsafe. I’m tired of saying this is going to go up like a box of f***ing dynamite. I’m tired of the working conditions. It’s a disaster.”
The inmate at HMP Wandsworth described the Category B prison as “hell”. A jail source added: “If we can’t control the use of mobiles what hope do we have of maintaining order in the event of a serious incident? We need support.”
Deserted
In footage seen by this paper he shows a wing of the South West London deserted by staff in the middle of the day and films himself flushing a blocked toilet.
The guard tells the lag it was “giving cheese and crackers” to one wing but “roast duck and caviar” on another. He agreed with the inmate’s suggestion: “It’s run awkwardly”.
We previously reported how some jails are descending into anarchy because of a lack of staff.
We obtained clips of a murderer and drug dealers openly boozing and chopping lines of white powder at HMP Northumberland.
Another told how a con bragged to a guard: “We run prisons now.” Another clip from HMP Bullingdon called it a “drug infested s***hole.”.
This week the governor of Britain’s biggest prison quit after the failure of plans to allocate some officers’ duties to prisoners.
From 2010/11 – 2014/15, the government reduced its jails budget by nearly a quarter, amounting to savings of nearly £900m, says the Prison Reform Trust. Unions say the cuts have plunged jails into anarchy and staff are being put at risk.
A Prison Service source said the clip is being probed added: “We will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against any prisoner involved.”