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July 9, 2024 50 mins
It's not something you expect, one day you're swimming in the local pool and you see your acquaintance Chris Atkins and have a bit of a chat with him whilst both of you are playing with your kids and then two days later he's on the front page of the Daily Mail, imprisoned for five years for tax fraud.

I didn't know what to think and I also was very worried about a boy being separated from his father at such an impressionable age.

Occasionally I'd google him and check his social media and wonder how to get hold of him but there was nothing. One day I wrote him a letter saying what was going on in the world hoping to cheer him up but didn't know where to send it.

Then suddenly, two and half years later, Chris emails me and says he's out and he LOVES fesshole.

We go for a pint and Chris tells me that he's basically been running his own fesshole inside jail, except not doing it for a laugh, but he's been working as a prison listener and hearing all the prisoners' terrible confessions of yes sometimes murder, but often just loneliness.

So of course I want to get him on the podcast, he's what we call in the business 'a friend of the google form" so we've queued him up.

It's actually a fantastic episode that goes on a bit of a journey - we start light with me and Dave just being silly, we get into an incredibly detailed chat with Chris about the conditions in jail, and accidentally pivot to become a campaigning podcast that's massively pro prison reform and then end with a series of often silly prison confession for Chris to react to.

We believe if you listen to the whole thing you'll end up wanting prison reform too.


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