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Paper Monitor

13:07 UK time, Wednesday, 13 March 2013

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

It's part of being British. You don't kick a man when he's down. Except when he's a former minister who's gone to prison.

The red tops delight in the alleged "welcome" for Chris Huhne at HMP Wandsworth.

The Daily Star splashes on how a bullied Huhne

The result: he was taken to the segregation wing. "Someone on the block found out he was a millionaire, so as soon as he was on the wing there were loads of people after him," a source tells the paper.

The Sun splashes on how a warder informed him over the tannoy that breakfast is served.

It prompted howls of laughter from other lags.

The paper gets Jimmy Donovan - "in Wandsworth six times" - to describe how the disgraced Lib Dem will fare in the jail.

"Huhne will be like a lamb to the slaughter. The inmates will be queuing up to make money out of him."

Supposedly you can buy anything in Wandsworth from mobile phones to drugs to protection. It's a grim place, Donovan says, with rats feeding off the inedible food that prisoners throw out of their cell windows.

On the opposite page Vicky Pryce is given a rough guide to HMP Holloway by Susan May who served time there for murder. Rough is the operative word.

"Holloway at night is like something you've never experienced before...They shout the most terrible abuse, and sometimes they set fire to their bed sheets, so then the corridors fill with smoke, too."

There's something almost Dickensian about it all - caged animals waiting to tear each other apart. It's perhaps a little confusing for readers fed a diet of stories about prison being all Sky Sports, soft furnishings and en suite bathrooms.

It's comforting for readers to know that Wandsworth makes Dante's inferno look like Ford Open Prison. Especially when there's an MP inside.

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