Michael Fagan
I was held on remand in Winchester Prison for two weeks for failing to pay a large hotel bill. My cell-mate during that period was a rather charming Irishman named Michael Fagan, notorious for having broken into Buckingham Palace – twice – and for asking the Queen for a cigarette. Fagan was also on remand – for multiple drugs offences, in his case.
Michael being a bit of a pseudointellectual, like me, we got on well. He even pressed a very dog-eared manuscript, the story of his life, on me, but I found it indecipherable and therefore unreadable. He didn’t seem to mind.
Being a nosy journalist, I naturally questioned him closely and at length about his famous royal escapades (what I still find amazing is that he managed to carry these out more than once). He answered my queries cheerfully enough, but I could never work out what was true and what he was merely making up to impress me. For instance, he told me that he had poked his nose into all the royal apartments, i.e. bedrooms, and that Andrew’s was by far the untidiest. But would he have had time to do this? Or was he telling me what he thought I wanted to hear?
Before he was sent to Winchester, Michael had been what we old lags call ‘nutted off’ – that is prison argot for being told by a panel of psychiatrists that you are mentally unwell and therefore unfit for normal prison life. I’m fairly sure that that bit was true.