The authorities have tried to make door security more professional, but there are no longer any professional doormen – they are now just hospitality workers or policemen of a kind. There is a big difference: if your car breaks down, you go to a good mechanic, and if you are a doorman or door agency, you should be good at what you do. You don’t work the door with someone because they are your mate; you work with him because he is good at what he does and hope he becomes your mate. He has to be good enough to watch that you do not get hurt and visa versa. You become comrades, brothers in arms – if one person gets hurt, you all get hurt.

I also saw doormen who just didn’t care what they did to people, and it made me think, ‘Fucking hell.’ But then I realised that those doormen hadn’t been hurt themselves. The person who hesitates gets glassed or kicked in the bollocks. The doorman that doesn’t hesitate doesn’t ever get hurt, because he cares more about himself than anyone else. I learned to be dirty like everyone else and to fight for my safety. I learned not to care, because caring means getting hurt. I have been in so many situations in which the more you care, the more you have to struggle, and the dirtier you are, the less they struggle. The more you hurt them, the quicker they are taken out of the club and the quicker the situation finishes. Also, the dirtier you are, the more people look at you and think, ‘Fucking hell.’ And that was the idea of being a good doorman back then.

I agree with Dave Courtney when he says that there will never be the quality of fighters working the door as there was back in the 1970s and ’80s, but that is also because there is not the quality of people wanting to fight the doormen. Now there is no reason to fight. You see, in my day we were fighting people from housing and council estates. For example, back then 20 to 25 blokes would come from one housing estate with the sole purpose of fighting us. You don’t get that now, so doormen don’t need to be the same class of fighters that they were 15 to 20 years ago. Also, because people now sue nightclubs and companies when doormen go over the top, the easy answer is to employ someone who doesn’t really want to get into a fight, who wants to appease rather than sort it. And so, as Courtney says, there isn’t the quality of fighter, because there isn’t the quality of punter any more to cause problems.

Nowadays, there is a lot less violence in clubs but a lot more violence on the streets, because there are a lot more people going out. For instance, you have 10,000 people going out in Norwich, where I worked for most of my life, on a Friday or Saturday night, so you now have 10,000 chances of a fight. When I was on the doors, there were maybe only 2,000 people out on a Friday or Saturday night.

Back when I first worked The Ritzy, I would often see four or five people fighting one, but I don’t think you really see that any more, either. Also, back then you would have a lot more time to have a good fight. And I really don’t think people are as nasty and as dirty now as they were back then. Actually, I think people are a lot more frightened, which is why there are so many people pulling out knives on each other. That never happened back in my day. In all the years I worked the doors and got myself into fights, I only remember seeing a knife in a fight twice. There was one time in Central Park, which was the upstairs bar at The Ritzy, and I remember a bloke got killed on London Street, Norwich. But that was 15 years ago. People are now both frightened and lazy – using a knife is a lot easier than having a good bout of fisticuffs with someone.

When I was 17, I didn’t think working the doors would be something I’d do for life. It was just another job. And I didn’t really understand why they’d asked me. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it,’ but I didn’t really understand why.

It wasn’t until I was in the thick of it that I quickly realised that I couldn’t just stand by and watch one of my fellow doormen get into a fight with two or three blokes. Getting stuck in and helping them out became instinctive – second nature. I didn’t really care about the punters. They weren’t my friends; my friends were the six or so blokes I worked with. Punters were the people who came into the club and kicked off, and they generally made for easy pickings. They were usually drunk, but you were not. You were a team, and they were not. The more ruthless you could be, the easier it was.

Violence has never frightened me. However, I must say that I have never liked violence. It has never rocked my boat, but it has never scared me either. I have never been frightened of being hurt. If anything, I think I was more worried about letting the people I worked with down, because you all rely on each other.

But it wasn’t all about having fights together; it was also about having some fun. It was all about shagging girls and nicking your mate’s clothes when he was upstairs with some bird. Or running up to him when he was on the job and trying to shove a carrot, which you’d stolen from the kitchen, up the bird’s arse. It was even about the fun of watching other doormen get themselves into trouble, like when one of your mates tried to throw someone out and the rest of us were thinking, ‘Look at the size of that punter. Fuck, you’re in trouble now, buddy. You’re on your own!’ Of course, he was never really on his own. We would always step in sooner or later, but just watching someone else struggle for a bit could be quite funny.

As a team, we became very close to each other, which I don’t think happens now. Instead of working with each other, doormen now seem to be competing with each other – who can look the best and get down the gym the most. Sadly, many doormen are now like puppets, with the manager, police, council, government and even punters pulling their strings. It is not their fault; it is just the way it is now, which I think is sad. There is no respect any more.

Back then, the manager knew you ruled by fear and respect. There was no other way to do things. I worked in the Welsh borders when the miners’ strike was on. The managers there were fucking tough and knew that what you stopped at the door you wouldn’t have to throw out of the pub. The front door was where you stood your ground and said, ‘No, you are not coming in.’ What you said to the punters and what you had ready in your hand just in case it kicked off big-time meant that they could bring it on at any time. And when you did have to show your colours, you showed your colours properly. There was no mercy. It wasn’t just a case of banging someone in the mouth. You would do as much damage as possible and be as horrible as you could, because you knew that everybody watching it would never come near you again. And when you have six or so doormen all doing the same, there wasn’t really much that you couldn’t come up against or that would faze you. A good door team was pretty invincible back then.

I remember a bizarre incident in the foyer at Rick’s Place in Norwich. A group from Great Yarmouth kicked off, and we were having a proper fight. It was a full-on brawl and getting really nasty. There was a young lad working in the cloakroom, and he was leaning out from the hatch and hitting them – and occasionally us too by mistake – with a large piece of wood. It was a free-for-all. People were trying to crawl away, getting hit by stools, strangled, bitten. And then when it was all finished, we laughed about it as we were straightening our ties and mopping up the blood from our broken noses, black eyes and knocked-out teeth – it was just our lives and our job. To us it was nothing; it was the norm for us. And that was what made a good door team a good door team.

And then, of course, there was the women side of things. Well, we could just never stop, could we? We had a little room at The Ritzy – we used to call it a ‘puppy room’ – which was where most of the doormen took women to shag. When I saw some girl who had just given me a blow job snogging one of my mates in the club a little later, I’d look at him and laugh to myself, thinking, ‘She just had my cock in her mouth.’ But, of course, I wouldn’t tell him until she had finished. That kind of camaraderie also made a good door team, but sadly you really can’t do those sorts of things any more. I don’t know of one club that has a puppy room, and I don’t know many doormen who would use one even if there was!

Doormen now stand on the doors with their earpieces and their long coats looking as ‘cool’ as they can, but they are not really doing the job any more. What we did back then was watch each other. We didn’t stand there looking good. We would be watching each other all the time: two doormen here; two doormen there. When two people walked off, you would take their place, or when one left you would follow him to see what he was doing. Now it seems as though they just don’t care about each other. The doormen outside are not concerned about the doormen inside. It seems that all they want to do is to stand at the front door, look good and just hope that no one they knock back will say, ‘I’ll come round your fucking house, then.’ I think it would scare them shitless, but it never happens any more.

Managers also probably now no longer feel safe. Back in my day, a doorman was someone who intimidated people. If someone came to a pub and kicked off, the manager would call his doormen in, and the punter who had kicked off would generally think, ‘Oh, fuck me!’ But someone who weighs 11 stone and says to a punter, ‘If you don’t leave, I am going to call the police,’ is unlikely to prompt the same reaction. Back in my day, the manager actually wanted someone who would turn up at the punter’s house at four in the morning and give him a good kicking. Why would he get a kicking? Because he had been harassing the landlord, despite warning after warning. Back then, there was enormous landlord–doorman loyalty, which definitely no longer exists. Now, you are not even allowed to tell someone to fuck off. Now, managers are abused all the time, and no one does a thing about it. It is terrible.

But, as I said, it is not their fault. Being a doorman is a new game now. In our day, we did it for the fun of it. We did it for the camaraderie. We put our safety and our lives on the line for each other. We might be outnumbered five to one but would still go outside and battle with a rugby team if necessary. Doormen just don’t have the opportunity to do these things any more, because now when you put someone out you have to put them in a certain arm or head lock that you have been trained to do, which is fine if the punter is prepared to let you. If not, the doorman is fucked.

In our day, we fought proper men. When I was 22, I fought blokes of my age now – 45 to 50. Hard men – men who had been fighting all their lives. I can remember when I first started at The Ritzy, I gave all the doormen heavy lead hand weights. I had spent hours making them all. Can you imagine doing that now? Can you imagine the head doorman giving his door team lead weights in case of a battle? But I bet a lot of today’s doormen would secretly like them!

One time, I was working at Peppermint Park on Rose Lane. Three fucking huge Russian sailors had come into town from the docks at nearby Lowestoft and were pissed off, as we had asked them to leave because they were touching up the female customers. I am not tall, and they towered over me, looking down at me as though I was a piece of shit. We got them outside relatively calmly, and then they decided to have a go. I had to fight really dirty, probably the dirtiest I have ever fought, as I knew I would have got a real hiding otherwise. I heard one of them screaming as I shoved my fingers hard into his eyes, and I hooked my thumb into the side of another’s mouth and felt it split, a bit like chicken from a bone. I think the word must have got around, as we never saw a Russian sailor at that venue again.

Another memory I have is from my second or third night on the doors at The Ritzy when I was told by the manager to throw two geezers out who were pissing around with a one-armed bandit. I knew I had to show the other doormen my colours. Billy Waters and I went up to these two fucking huge geezers and said, ‘Look, it isn’t my fault, but the manager wants you out.’ I pointed to the manager, and when these two looked over at him we smashed them hard in the bollocks, because we knew they would be a handful. None of this nice stuff. Nowadays, doormen would say, ‘Excuse me, sir, but would you mind leaving, as the manager wants you to go?’ They’d reply, ‘Fuck that. Tell the manager I want to see him.’ And the doormen would actually go and get the manager!

Fuck me! In my day, the management didn’t want to know. The manager sat in his office, and all he wanted to do was get to half-past two so that he could say, ‘OK, lads, put the chains on the doors, and let’s have a beer.’ Things were completely different. They were a lot rougher, and there were a lot more dangerous situations. For instance, John Tansley and I were working in Central Park when three coaches of black lads turned up. We looked at each other, and I said, ‘This is not going to go well, John.’ Central Park was only a small function room, and they kicked off in the toilets. There was just me and John working that night, and we were the only two white guys in the building. While the manager was in his office sorting through paperwork and reading Penthouse, they were downstairs glassing each other. And it was all over a woman. On that occasion, I must admit that I looked at John and said, ‘No, mate. Nothing to do with us. Let them sort it out between themselves.’ I don’t think this sort of thing happens now, either.

There are still a few ‘old timers’ around – a few work at the university (of East Anglia) – but not many any more. Most doormen my age gave up doing the doors years ago or were refused a licence because of a criminal record.

Obviously, because of my situation, I can’t work the doors any more, but if I was, I would certainly miss the old times. Not the violence, but the fun, the one-night stands and even some of the excuses to try and get away from the one-night stands. I remember working with Robin Barratt at Rick’s Place when he spent most of the final part of one evening in the cellar room because two of the birds he was shagging at the same time turned up at the club, alone, waiting for him to finish. He was fucking frozen by the end of the night. We seriously considered asking them both to wait at the bar and calling him out, but we just couldn’t be that cruel.

I can remember going to some woman’s house to see her after I had finished work one night, because I thought her old man was away. I looked through the window and saw her talking to someone – I couldn’t see who, though. Obviously, I had been there before, and I watched her as she went into the kitchen. I rushed round the side of the house to knock on the kitchen window, but she went straight into the bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard police sirens, so I quickly hid under a hedge in the corner of the garden. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged out by my legs. Someone had reported me for looking through the window, thinking that I was a peeping Tom or something. They put me in the police car, but luckily a copper knocked on her door and she said that she was waiting for me. If she hadn’t, I would have been nicked!

Another funny moment was when one of my fellow doormen was shagging some bird in the staff toilets at The Ritzy. Billy and I got a champagne bucket full of ice-cold water and threw the whole lot over the door of the cubicle just as he was doing the business. He thought it was hilarious; she almost took my head off.

I loved going to work every night, as every evening I would have a laugh and some fun, but I don’t think doormen laugh as much on the doors now as we did back then. It is more serious, and everyone is trying to be more ‘professional’.

Sadly, with a criminal record for a minor firearms offence I won’t be returning to the doors. When I finally get out of prison, I will try and find a normal day job, but I will miss the fun of the doors – I will miss that more than anything else, really.

I am currently serving my time at Norwich Prison. It all started one day when I was driving down Drayton Road in Norwich on my motorbike from my house to the gym at the Norwich Sports Village nearby. I was pulled over by the police just a few metres from my house. I thought it was my small number plate again, as I had occasionally been pulled over for that in the past. I had been meaning to change it, but you know how things are, and I had never got round to it. Still, I thought that I would probably know the coppers and might be able to talk my way out of it – yet again. I got off my bike in my normal nonchalant manner and asked what the matter was. The copper replied by saying, ‘Sorry, Bob, but we have got to arrest you for a firearms offence.’

‘What?’ I asked. It just didn’t register.

‘You have a shotgun under the stairs,’ he replied.

‘Don’t deny it,’ one of the other coppers said. ‘We know where it is.’

‘Yeah, but it is an antique gun. It’s old,’ I said. ‘I was going to put it on my French dresser.’ I didn’t understand what was happening.

It wasn’t until a few weeks after I had been arrested that I found out that one of my ex-girlfriend’s teenage kids had apparently found the gun under the stairs and had told his mum, who’d decided to go to the police. Forensics tested it, and they put me away because one of the barrels worked. The minimum sentence was five years, but even the local policemen who I knew really well had said that I wouldn’t get that long, not for something so trivial. I also had had no criminal convictions, apart from an occasional parking ticket.

It went to the magistrates’ court, where my case was referred to the Crown court. Once at the Crown court, my lawyers and I got access to all the statements from the witnesses, and I found out that my ex’s two sons had actually broken into my house, found the gun and had then given it to the police. I was on police bail, but I went looking for them almost every night once I knew what they had done. The kids realised this, and restraining orders were put in place. I wasn’t allowed to pass their house on Drayton Road, where I lived, because they lived 200 yards up the road from me. It got so time consuming and difficult not knowing where I could go, what I could do and who I could speak to. It consumed my life.

After that, it was like being on a roller coaster. Every time I read the paper, I looked for crimes and sentences involving firearms – sentences ranged from eighteen months to seven years for robbing a post office. Looking at the different sentences, I thought I would never get five years – not for what I had done. I reassured myself that everything was going to be fine. I had a bit of money at that time, and I thought I would pay any fine imposed and that would be the end of it.

The fact that the police hadn’t actually retrieved the gun from my house, as I had originally thought, and that it had been given to them by my ex-girlfriend’s two sons, made the court case a lot longer, as my barrister tried to argue that the evidence was inadmissible. In the end, the case lasted about 11 months in total, as it kept getting put back. Because these two lads had broken into my house and had given the gun to the police, they needed me to admit that it had originally been in my possession, otherwise they would have had no proof. Me, being as honest and stupid as I was, had acknowledged from the beginning that it was my gun. Looking back, if I had never admitted this when I had been first pulled over, I would never have gone to prison. My fingerprints weren’t even on the weapon.

But the judge was having none of it. He said that it was a matter of public safety. Because my house had actually been unlocked, anyone could have got access to the gun, which made me an irresponsible person. My house was never locked, but we couldn’t really say in court that I had two big Alsatian dogs and no one would dare steal from me, as the judge would have certainly thought that I was a professional thug. He would have thought that I was someone who intimidated people, which was why I had the gun. I couldn’t really say that I didn’t need to lock my house because I had a reputation in Norwich. It was a difficult case throughout, as my barrister had to keep away from my reputation and portray me as a normal person.

As I said, it took around 11 months to finally get to sentencing, even though I had essentially pleaded guilty at the very beginning. If I had known how the courts worked and how the seasoned criminals did it, I would never have said anything at the very beginning when I had been first pulled over. But of course I hadn’t known.

My barrister asked me time and time again, ‘Why did you say it was your gun?’

‘Because I did have an antique gun,’ I would reply.

‘Yes, but you don’t tell the police you had one,’ he would say.

‘But why?’ I would ask.

‘Because you don’t do that. Criminals don’t do that!’

But I wasn’t a criminal. I was just telling the truth. I didn’t have a history of violence. I had been doing the doors for almost 26 years and had a successful agency, but I had never been to court or been arrested for any violent crime. Even though the minimum sentence was five years, my barrister also thought I had a very good chance of getting away with a heavy fine and community service. He couldn’t really see me getting the statutory five years.

But the judge slagged me off completely. He told me that I was a professional ‘enforcer’ who ran a door agency of ‘bouncers’ – he said there was no other way of putting it – and the only reason I had the gun was for intimidation. I felt fucked.

My mum, brothers, sister, her son and some of my friends were there to hear the judge deliver my sentence. He said, ‘I am giving you five years.’ The only way I can describe my reaction is to compare it to when you sometimes lose your balance and catch your breath. It was like being on a funfair ride and suddenly dropping.

‘Five years for making a mistake?’ I shouted. A security guard tried to grab my arm. ‘No,’ I shouted, shrugging him off. ‘Five years?’

The judge said, ‘Mr Etchells, you have nothing to say that your barrister hasn’t already said. Now go downstairs.’ I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my mum or my family.

I was in shock. I just couldn’t believe it. I had lost everything: my house, job, money, everything. It was all double Dutch to me, and I didn’t really understand what was happening. It was such a numbing pain. As I sat downstairs in the cell, my barrister said that we would try to appeal. This sounded great to me, as I thought I would be released on bail until the case was reheard (just as I had been while I waited for my trial), but no. I mumbled that surely because I had pleaded guilty I should really have got a bit off, but my barrister said that I had been given the minimum sentence anyway. There wouldn’t even be anything much to appeal against.

I didn’t go to prison straight away. I had to wait until there were six or seven of us to fill the van. I had been sentenced at about 3.30 p.m., but I didn’t end up getting to Norwich Prison until about 7.30 p.m.

My girlfriend Lisa rang my brother Andrew at about 5.30 p.m., and he told her that he was sorry but I had been given five years. She was devastated and broke down. Luckily, my family all rallied round and went round to see her as often as they could. In a way, I think I was really lucky that I wasn’t there, because seeing her upset would have made things even harder.

On the way to prison, I tried to reach up to look out of the van window. I am from Norwich and know every road and turn. I saw people I knew, but they couldn’t see in. I was trying to cling onto something I knew. We drove up Knox Road, through the main gates, and I heard the gates slam shut behind us.

It was a horrible, horrible feeling. I felt like a wound-up piece of string, not knowing what was ahead. I was then taken to the reception area, where the guards removed my handcuffs. ‘What the fuck are you doing here, Bob?’ a guard I knew asked.

‘I dunno,’ I said.

‘What have you done?’ he asked again.

‘I got five years,’ I replied.

‘What for?’

‘I dunno,’ I said again, confused and stunned.

The screws who I knew started talking to me, but it was all just a blur. One minute I had been surrounded by my family and friends, and the next minute I was handcuffed and in prison. It was weird, but because I knew quite a lot of the prison officers I felt I wasn’t alone. I was interviewed, and I knew the screw who was interviewing me, but I was in prison. I couldn’t understand it.

After being in reception, I was then strip-searched and given my prison clothes. But I wasn’t given new clothes; I was given someone else’s clothes, including their boxer shorts. The clothes were all grey or mauve.

The prison was cold, damp, dirty and musky. I was put into another cell until all the other new prisoners had been processed, and then we were all taken up into the main prison – fresh meat. It was exactly like a scene from Escape from New York, with everyone hanging around the prison landings. I felt like a rabbit caught in headlights. I looked up at everyone staring down at me and thought, ‘Who the fuck have I thrown out? Who have I beaten up? Who have I given a good hiding to?’ There are a lot of drug dealers in prison, and over the years I had thrown a good few out of the pubs and clubs I had worked in or had stopped them from getting in. I wondered if any of them were staring down at me.

I was lucky at the beginning, as I went straight onto the fours, which was one of the better landings, and I got my own room . . . sorry, I mean cell. I didn’t come out of it for about three days. I didn’t eat. I didn’t do anything. The thing about prison meals is there are only three choices: crap, shit and more shit. It is disgusting, and if you don’t put in your food slip, you get the vegetarian choice, which is even worse.

Because I didn’t come out of my cell for three days, I didn’t know about the food, about letters, about visits, about applying for work to stop the boredom or about the gym. I didn’t know when I could go for a shower or about how the phone worked – that I needed to get credit and register my phone numbers – so when I did actually ask about these things I was three days behind. They had explained everything to me when I had first arrived, but because I had been in so much shock, nothing had sunk in or registered.

It is hard to explain what happens to you, but your defence mechanisms kick in, barriers go up and you go into a very basic survival mode. After three days, I came out of my cell and started to talk to people. I got chatting to a young lad whose dad had been a good mate of mine when I had a flat in Costessey. In fact, I had known the lad when he was a boy. He was in for stabbing someone and had already done four years. He obviously knew the prison routine and told me what I needed to know.

To use the phone, you had to register who you wanted to call and supply their telephone number, their full name and address, and their date of birth. However, I just didn’t know that sort of information for everybody I wanted to call. So, a small problem like that suddenly became a mountain. I was given an initial £2.50 phone credit. After that had gone, I wasn’t given any more. And all I wanted to do was to talk to Lisa.

Norwich Prison was exactly like the one in Porridge, with the same cold bleakness and brick walls and screws who don’t really want to talk to you much. Everything was done by your last name: Etchells this and Etchells that. There was nothing personal.

At the very beginning of a person’s stay in prison, they have to decide whether they are going to be one of the majority or one of the minority. The majority are those who know prison and the system very well and feed off the minority. If you want to be fed off, you stay in the minority; if you want to be a feeder, you stay in the majority. Most people definitely don’t want to be in the minority, so they feed off others, and abuse the new arrivals. For instance, a new person is given £2.50 phone credit. Someone in the majority will offer to help him out but first ask if they can quickly phone their mum. They then use up most of the new person’s credit – that’s how things start. Newcomers are an easy target.

I also learned very quickly that everyone in prison is in on a scam. If there were, say, 700 people in Norwich Prison, I met maybe just a handful of genuine, decent people in all the time I was there. Prison is an association of criminals.

You can’t have any morals in prison. If you have morals, you are nothing. For example, people will ask me if I have a stamp, but if I need a stamp, they will just say, ‘Sorry, mate. Don’t have any.’ Even if I gave him one last week. And then I think to myself, ‘Hang on. I am asking for and getting wound up over a stamp!’ I earned £1,200 a week running my door agency in Norwich, but now I can’t even buy a stamp!

When I finally settled into prison life, I really saw what was going on. I saw the bullying and the intimidation, and the threats and the fear. However, Norwich Prison doesn’t have one particular hard bloke who runs the place. People generally know that no matter how hard they are they could accidentally knock into someone on the landing who has just come in, who is high on drugs and who would stab them with the pointed end of a toothbrush. He might weigh only nine stone and have never fought in his life, but he would be scared and high on drugs. Or the new prisoner might take offence at being bumped into and wait a while until the so-called hard man went into the shower and then hit him hard with a coffee cup in a sock. So, being someone who can fight doesn’t count for much in prison. There are no rules, and there is nowhere to hide. For instance, if you have a fight in the middle of the street in town, you might never see that person again, but in prison you live with him 24/7. If you have a ruck with someone, you will see him again in the dinner queue and again in the queue for medication and again on the landings or in the gym. And he can stab you or throw hot water and sugar in your face at any time. So, there is not really a hard man of the prison, not like in the days of the Krays, for instance. There is no trust, and just because you might be the hardest bloke on the landing doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be stabbed in the shower.

Despite all of this hatred and dishonesty and intimidation, there were certain times when I was in Norwich Prison that everyone stuck together. If a member of an inmate’s family died, we were sad for them; if we heard that someone who had left prison had overdosed and died, the whole landing was solemn. It didn’t make sense. Two days previously, someone might have been trying to fucking stab the bloke over an argument about some speed or sleeping tablets, and yet the whole landing would go to church when he died, and we would then spend a few hours or sometimes even days talking about him. One minute it was all filth, and the next minute it was all soft. And the next day it was back to mayhem again.

Luckily for me, my cell overlooked the road, so when I got my first visit I said to Lisa that I would tie a sock to the bars so that she could see where I was. I think it made a lot of difference to her, and it made a lot of difference to me too. I wasn’t frightened of getting into a fight, but there are different fears in prison. Prison can be scary, what with the noise and being next to people with hepatitis, Aids and all sorts of other diseases – you just don’t know what to expect. So, the fact that I could look out of my window and see Lisa coming with the dogs and my brothers kept me human.

I never became a parasite, and I never became a bully while I was in prison. I was never in the majority. I stayed in the minority, but I wasn’t bullied either. I think if I had been put in another prison to begin with, I would have got into a lot of fights and have been in danger, but not in Norwich. Because I was known and well respected, because it was known that I ran a door agency, because I didn’t have anything to do with drugs and because I stayed in my cell a lot of the time, I wasn’t a threat to anyone.

It is all drugs now. People smuggle in drugs up their arse. If other prisoners think that someone has smuggled in drugs, five or six guys will storm into his cell to ‘spoon’ his arse and get the drugs out. Pretty fucking crazy.

There was a lot of group violence as well: three or four on one. Gangs frequently went into someone’s cell and made a mess of them, but you couldn’t get involved, as the victim might have owed somebody something and not paid it back, despite several warnings. A lot of the time, you had to ignore what you saw – it wasn’t your business. It wasn’t like on the streets where you could help if someone was getting a kicking. Inside, there was always a reason. If you got involved, you were in trouble and those prisoners would turn on you.

It was all about material possessions. For instance, if you had one and a half ounces of tobacco, a half ounce of that was worth another ounce, because if you borrowed a half ounce from me, you had to give me back one ounce plus the half ounce you borrowed. This was when the majority preyed on newcomers, because the person who had just come into prison didn’t have anything. This was when you got the intense intimidation and bullying. For example, some people were intimidated into pretending to have a back ache to get the doctor to give them medication. Other prisoners did little things to frighten and intimidate people, like walking into your cell and picking up your things. I told one person to fuck off when he tried to do this. He did, but many people were too frightened to tell another prisoner to fuck off, so the intimidation continued.

Prison teaches people how to improvise. Prisoners made their own 90 per cent proof alcohol. I met people who were doing their sentence brain-dead because they had drunk too much ‘hooch’, or ‘moonshine’ as it is known in the US. They just slept their prison sentence away. Prison is all about drugs and medication, and prisoners will do almost anything to get sleeping tablets, painkillers or any form of medication. They’d walk around the landings shouting down, asking who had what available. You’d then see people passing stuff up over the landings, which eventually went for four or five times its original value.

Someone can go into prison for just three months and come out a complete bastard, a liar and totally untrustworthy. You see, it is easy to lose your morals if you are intimidated, as you have to intimidate back in order to survive. For instance, you can sit and be friendly and chat to someone in his cell, before leaving a few seconds later after having stolen something that you have already sold for a few ounces of tobacco. There are no rules. The long-termers feed off the short-termers, and people who are bullied or whose stuff is stolen can’t go to the staff and say they are being bullied, because then they will really get beaten up. And being a grass in prison is taboo – it’s almost as bad as being a sex offender. You will be beaten, no matter what, and people will just step over you.

The regime in prison was degrading. You had to ask for everything: for shampoo, soap, toothpaste, everything. You even had to ask for an envelope. You were allowed one envelope a day. One fucking envelope! If I’d used that envelope and wanted another, I’d have to borrow one, and then I’d have to pay it back.

There are different classes of people in prison: you have the right scumbag, the lesser scumbag, the scumbag and eventually the nearly human. I struck lucky with my first cellmate, a bloke from Wymondham. He got nine months and a £55,000 fine for health-and-safety violations. He came into prison about two weeks after me and was on the same sort of moral level as I was. At first, he was on another landing, and I could see he was just a normal person in a very abnormal world. He was in complete shock. His wife was pregnant, and he was getting got at in prison. I liked him, and I took him under my wing and helped him cope a little bit. He was a nice bloke, and we became good friends.

It is amazing how people make a life for themselves in prison. Just sitting watching everything that went on was amazing. As well as physical violence, intimidation was rife. The fours intimidated the threes, the threes intimidated the twos and the twos intimidated the ones. Each landing had their little crew running all the scams, but I managed to make friends with other prisoners without joining their ranks.

Nobody wanted a job as a landing cleaner, because you’d be used to move drugs around. So you’d refuse the job, which then gave the pushers and dealers an opportunity to get someone they wanted. It was important to pick and choose your jobs because of the wider implications of what each entailed. I was lucky, as I worked in the printing shop, where I was treated a little bit better and more like a human being than in many of the other jobs. But even in the printing shop, I saw people take the pots of glue used to join the pages together and sell them as solvents.

The prison authorities tried to move me twice: once to Wayland and once to Highpoint. However, I refused to go, because I knew that if I could stay in Norwich I would eventually be sent to Britannia House, an open prison that was a lot more comfortable. It was just a matter of time, and I was eventually transferred. However, I was sent to Peterborough Prison for a week while I was at Britannia House, as I broke my bail conditions. By then, I was working at the YMCA on day release. I left work, went to ASDA and drove down Drayton Road, which I wasn’t meant to do – I still wasn’t allowed to go past my ex-girlfriend’s house. I was seen, arrested later that evening and sent off to Peterborough Prison for a week. Peterborough was very different – it was private and run like an American prison with gangs. I wasn’t there long enough to judge, but people did say that the facilities there were much better than at Norwich and that the food was much better.

Norwich was such a cold prison. Visits lasted only an hour, whereas in most prisons visiting times are two hours minimum and sometimes up to four hours. Norwich was not a nice prison to be in. For instance, if you had to make an appointment to see the dentist, it might take three weeks or more to see him. You could have an abscess and a horrendous toothache and be in pain for weeks.

Eventually, I went on a course and became a ‘listener’ – somebody people could call at any time for a talk. I made friends with John, a lifer who’d killed someone and been given 15 years. He’d then stabbed his cellmate and been given life. He’d served 27 years. His skin was sallow and grey, he had prison tattoos on his neck and arms, he was covered in scars, and his eyes were dead – there was no sparkle or life left in them. He was never getting out. He looked a bit like Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

One day, we were chatting when a black man came into the cell and interrupted us, asking if we had any ‘burn’ (dope). From his sock, John took out a blade he had made from two toothbrushes melted together with a lighter and told the guy to fuck off or he would stab him there and then and leave him to bleed. We then returned to our discussion as though nothing had happened. He would have killed him just because he’d interrupted our conversation. John had nothing to lose. That is what it is like in prison.

Lifers who will never get out, who have no family, who no one writes to, who have nothing and who have nothing to lose make their life a little better by intimidation and running the prison as best they can. Their only home is prison, which is why they are the way they are.

Compared to Norwich Prison, Britannia House is brilliant. It is really for people who have only made one mistake and shouldn’t have been put in prison in the first place. In Britannia House, you eventually become a human being again, and after a while you can do charity work or get a day job. However, you have to work hard to get to Britannia House – you have to be a listener or a Samaritan, you have to keep out of trouble and you have to be seen to be a bit of a mentor to other people. It was a little bit easier for me, because I was well known around Norwich and well respected, and I became a mentor to a lot of young people coming into prison. Usually, if you do all of these things, you can get to Britannia House after about half of your sentence, but I was transferred in just ten months, mainly because I stayed in Norwich and used my reputation and the people I knew.

At Britannia House, you are allowed out every day, but you have to report back every night for the duration of your sentence. It is still prison, and if you don’t return one night or are late, or if you do something wrong, you are sent straight back to Norwich Prison. You can lose your place in Britannia House just like that. There could be an argument in which someone gets hurt and you get sent back to proper prison just for being a witness. Or if you get stopped when on day release for not wearing a seat belt or for not having a tax disc on your car – in fact, if you have any kind of run-in with the police at all – that will be it.

I sometimes stop at The Prince of Wales, the last venue I worked at, on my way back to Britannia House. If there has been an argument, part of me wants to sort it out, but the other part says, ‘I am invisible. I am not here.’ Because of who I am, I could so easily get dragged in. While I am in Britannia House, I have to be whiter than white.

One of the most moving and emotional experiences I had while in prison was on my first New Year’s Eve inside. Because I could see into the car park, Lisa told me she would come and visit me. I kept looking for her and eventually saw her waving up at me. On the stroke of midnight, and just as the fireworks exploded nearby, she shouted, ‘I love you, Bob.’ Suddenly, one of the other prisoners shouted, ‘She loves you, Bob.’ A few seconds later, the whole prison was filled with the noise of inmates banging their mugs on the railings and shouting, ‘She loves you, Bob. She loves you, Bob.’

I would never be allowed to work the doors any more, but, to be honest, I don’t think I want to. Prison has allowed me to get out of the door game. I did almost 27 years and left the industry with my reputation and more importantly my dignity intact.

Bob ran a number of door companies, at one time employing over 50 doormen throughout the region, as well as providing debt-collecting and other security-related services. He has never applied for his SIA badge, nor is he ever likely to.

Bob will soon be due for parole.