Читать книгу Insanity - My Mad Life - Charles Bronson - Страница 20

Insanity is everyday life inside the asylum — screams, banging about, violence and pain, but mostly depression. We are all lost souls living from day to day. We, Category ‘A’ inmates are like chess pieces — they pick us up and move us where they choose to; we have no say in it!

I’ll tell you what’s insane — years back, sitting on a plastic pot and having a crap — full-grown men sitting on a potty — then, when the cell door is opened, walking to the recess to slop it away! At times, I’ve slung it all over a screw — not a pretty sight!

Everything is mad in jail, and it gets under your skin, it makes you sick. It drives me to the edge and pushes me over. I’ve been unstable ever since. My senses are now on turbo! I expect anything, like my door crashing open and shields smashing me up against the wall or smashing into me whilst I’m in bed. They then wrap me up, secure me in a body belt, put on the ankle straps and cart me away. It’s happened so many times. It can still happen today, even as I write these words — it’s my life!

Tension is no longer a coiled spring ready to pounce … it’s a way of life for me and it can cause hate and bitterness. I went through a period in which I hated; I was full of hate but I came out of that stage, I learned to ride it, I learned to juggle it. I’m now a connoisseur of madness. I play them at their own game. And that’s all it is, a game!

We all have to play a part; the system knows it’s only a game, a game of insanity. I smile and laugh now, I don’t take it seriously any more ’cos the system loves to upset people! Nothing would please them more than to open my door and see me dead, hanging, or a cut-throat lying by my dead body. They haven’t the bottle to kill me! They’ve had 30 years to do it, but I’m still here and they know I’m telling the truth! Truth hurts, see, truth is a weapon; kill me or drop me out! Leave me in my madness, I love my own space!

Insanity is prison life. It breeds violence and madness and really fucks you up. It made me what I am today — unpredictable. I’m a very confused man, but I have this power to help the insane. Mad people come to me, I attract them — like attracts like! They wave to me regularly, pure 22-carat nuts! But I love them all. My life is now madness; the madder the better for me.

I once had a thought, before I married my beautiful Saira, that I’d like to meet the maddest bitch on the planet, and I mean dangerously mad. I’d like to fuck her in a pit of scorpions, poisonous ones, or swim with her in shark-infested waters. Live dangerously — drive at 130mph the wrong way up the motorway at 3.00am and hope nothing is coming so we could laugh and cry together!

Another outlandish thought was to get two guns. One bullet in each … spin the chamber … she puts her gun into my ear, I put mine in hers. Click! Click! It’s love. What girl could or would do that? Find her, if she exists! She’s the one, pure mad. She doesn’t smoke or do drugs but she kicks ass. She fights to live.

All aspects of life are insane, but this prison shit is the maddest! I’m now getting older, some say too old. ‘Old Charlie’s past his best.’ ‘Charlie should get out now and retire.’ Who knows when the end will fucking come? Right now, I’m living on the edge. Madness is all around me; I smell it, I stink of it; I’m the ultimate madman: a poet, an artist, a sculptor, a writer, a fitness freak — I’m also a man of respect. Not bad for a madman, eh?

I’ve kept my morals and self-discipline, which is more than I can say for the system. The system is jealous of me. I’m caged up and they’re fucking jealous of me. But am I jealous of them? The screws, the governors and the doctors — am I fuck! They’re all puppets — ‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’ All for what? A wage, power or just to be evil. Whatever! They’re all fucking insane. They’re the same as me; the only difference is that I admit I’m mad — they never will. They sit on their fat lazy arses, scratching their fat lazy bellies. They fart away their lives. Oh well! That’s the insane for you. Until they start to change, then how can I?

Insanity. Can anybody define it? Just what is it? Let me tell you, it’s a terrible pain, or can be. Ronnie Kray once told me, ‘It’s a gift of life, if you keep it under control.’ But my view is, it’s a pain in the head. There are so many different forms of insanity, from the silly to the dangerous. Some mad people are quite harmless, loving and good-natured. Others are homicidal maniacs.

Me? Well, I guess I could be classed as unpredictable. Some would say the best thing for me is a .38 in the crust. Yes, I am, in fact, one of the insane and proud of it! My insanity has taken me on a journey through all three maximum-secure asylums in England, and at one time I was Britain’s number one madman.

But right now I need to explain to you about insanity. I’m not a doctor or a poxy professor. I’m just a man who understands it, only ’cos I’ve lived among the mad for many years. I can smell it, taste it and feel it. Insanity hits me like a mallet over the head. And what is more, insanity cannot be cured. No mad person can be cured. They can be controlled, and then apparently get better, but the madness never goes away. You’re born mad and you die mad!

We get urges, like some people want to stuff themselves with food or beer, or the reverse, they like to throw the food back up — it’s all in the mind! We are addicted to madness and at times we lose the plot, just like a seizure. Believe me, it’s never cured; we get older, slower and more mature, but the insanity lies deep within, it’s a disease of the mind and it doesn’t just affect the insane, it affects everybody around them — family, friends, nurses, everybody. Believe me, it’s awesome! It’s, at times, lethal and dangerous to the point of death. We get vibes, visions, voices and urges. We just go on a mission; some don’t come back. It’s a dead end. We exist but we do not live.

Some will be drugged up, with psychotropic tranquillisers, but that is only control. Some will be given electrotherapy — shocks to the brain, torture. Nothing works, nothing ever will. How can it?

I’m now gonna shock you with some true facts. I’ve mentioned some of these nutters already. Now it’s time to meet them properly. Let me take you on a journey to hell!

• He sat in a chair, silent, shaking, depressed! On the edge, and then he jumped up and started to scream. He was still screaming as the white coats carried him off to the ‘silent room’. He had stabbed himself in the eye with a needle! I can still hear his scream inside my head. That’s insanity. He lost an eye, but that’s not all he lost — his mind went with it!

• Another swallowed a pen, a whole pen. Could you swallow a pen? Who wants to swallow a pen?

• He was locked up safe for the night, but his mind was in agony! Insanity was back. He was crying out for help, but behind the door there was nobody to help or listen to him. They found him swinging off the bars at 6.00am in the morning. He was 22 years old.

• The pyromaniac felt the urge coming on. So he set fire to the dustbin whilst he was pulling himself off watching the flames. The nurses put it out, then locked him up in seclusion. It was funny to see; he was still watching while they carried him off. Insanity at its best! Violence out of control, that’s what it is.

• One guy, who climbed a building, flapped his arms to fly, and when he landed he broke both his ankles. Something inside him told him he could fly. The insanity came back. It never really went away, it’s always there. It’s there until you die. It just goes to sleep at times, but believe me, it wakes up and starts to scream!

• He sat in the corner of the cell looking at his hands. They looked deformed, old, tired and worn. He punched himself in the face, again and again. He began to laugh as he pounded into his ugliness. When the door unlocked, he steamed into the white coats. It took ten to restrain him. Insanity is beyond reality. Don’t even try to work it out. That’s insanity!

• He walked around the yard, hunched up like an old man. Hands in his pockets, eyes on the floor, nobody took a lot of notice. He had been walking around for 25 years, no trouble. Why should he be any trouble? It was just another day, until he jumped on another madman and bit his throat out. That’s insanity! It was bubbling up inside him all the time! Nobody ever knew why, or how it got there. So what good are the doctors and nurses and the drugs and the therapy? I’ll tell you — no good. Insanity is incurable and you’d better believe it!

• He put his cock on the table and hit it with a large, square PP9 battery in a sock. Anyone else would have screamed. He does it for fun, pain and pleasure. You should see the size of it! Awesome! He must have hit it a million times. There is no more pain. Tell a doctor that. How does he cure that? He can’t. That’s insanity; pain is insanity!

• She sat crying in her room, in the asylum, alone, depressed. She began to peel off the flakes of paint on the wall. Do you know how sharp these flakes of paint are? Sharp enough to cut a wrist and pull on the tendon and artery. They found her in a pool of blood the next day. Took her out in a body bag; 26 years old, a pretty little thing. That’s insanity!

• He never did like the loon with the funny eyes; it was his eyes he never liked, so he stabbed him … 28 times. The loon never once said a word to him.

• Another one got stabbed in the ear; it pierced his brain, cabbaged for life. He’s in a chair, shits his pants. What a way to end up. He was 32 years old. That’s insanity!

• The gay psycho loved a bit of fresh meat. The new loon was only 21, with a lovely tight arse. The psycho left him in a heap in his cell with a bleeding arse. The lad got eight stitches and a scarred brain.

• What about the guy who ripped out his testicle? Why? No one knows, no one ever will know! They can guess, they can pretend to know, but they never will know!

• Then there were two madmen who took a fellow madman hostage. (Durham) Dead man. They took half his brain out, cut his bollocks off.

• He hated his face so much he smashed it to bits with a bottle of Ribena … 850 stitches. Now he loves it!

• He had a toothache, ‘bad’; it took him all night to cure it. He tore out all his teeth! ‘PAIN!’ Then pain free. That’s insanity!

• A man, 38, spent 15 years of his life in the asylum. He picked up the razor and began to cut. The screams could be heard all over the asylum, but why did do it? He had his cock in his hand as the white coats rushed in! Insanity at its best!

Yeah, I’ve met them all! Hey, I’ll tell you who’s mad — Chris Brand. We call him Brandy, and he’s one sad bastard. He killed a con in Norwich Jail 20 years back; he was only 20 years old at the time and he drowned this old lag in the bath. Brandy gets bad bouts of madness during which he does mad things like sticking razor blades up his arse! Ouch! Sets fire to his hair, cuts himself up. He is a sad case.

Last I heard he took an overdose … and survived. How many fucking lives has this guy got, I ask? But he’s a game fucker; he once cut big Fred Lowe down his face. Fred killed two cons in ’93. If he gets a hold of Brandy, Fred’s 18st, Brandy’s 10st! Not good odds, is it? But Brandy never runs away from anybody. He once said to me, ‘Chas, do you know why I’m not scared of anybody?’

‘No, why?’ I replied.

‘Because one day I’ve got to die and the truth is the sooner the better!’

Brandy will die inside and, no doubt, violently. What a fucking sad world. Insanity drove him mad!

I’ll tell you who’s also lost the plot — Dougie Wakefield. I met Dougie in Armley Prison in Leeds back in 1975. In the ’70s and ’80s Doug had the label as Britain’s most violent man. He was a Yorkshireman, having been sentenced to life for stabbing his uncle with a garden fork. The poor bastard had more perforations in him than a tea bag when he finished with him.

Dougie just lost his mind in the ’70s. I don’t think he knew what day or month it was; he took a screw hostage in Long Lartin and demanded a cat! Why a cat? Fuck knows! Then he half-strangled another screw, then he killed Brian Peak in Parkhurst. Brian was the wing barber, and often trimmed my tash for me!

Dougie got another life on top. Broadmoor refused to accept him and he spent years in solitary; two years of that was spent in the box in Albany. That’s where he started to deteriorate mentally, so they moved him to the hospital wing in Parkhurst. Whilst there, a little Jock stuffed a coffee jar into the face of the Yorkshire Ripper, and ripped him right up. Jock Costello got ten years on top for that attack. He should have got a medal.

The Ripper was right chopped up; 100 stitches, he was a beauty. But Dougie made a statement to the pigs that it was his coffee jar and he gave it to Jock, which helped to convict him, so Dougie lost his good name. All his years of suffering finally took away his morals. You don’t fucking make statements to pigs. Full stop.

I lost touch with him for some years, then in the early ’90s I bumped into him up in Full Sutton Prison — he was still very strange. I noticed his walk, it was pathetic, 15st and wiggling his fat arse, and he seemed to talk in a high-pitched voice. Twenty-plus years had turned him into a fucking lunatic.

Then in the mid ’90s, I was blown away, I opened the Guardian newspaper and there he was, looking at me. PRISONER WANTS A SEX CHANGE. After 30 years of being caged up, he had finally lost his mind; he believed he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. Dougie Wakefield was insane, he was still 15 fucking stone and looked like a rugby player. Who the fuck’s he gonna hitch up with? The Elephant Man? What man would date him? Fuck me, your life would be at stake! Still, the facts are simple; Doug lost it over the Ripper attack in the ’80s at Parkhurst. He should not have done that.

Ask Jock Costello what he thinks. I had a lot of respect for Dougie up until then, as he was a legend! Fearless! I wonder where he is now. Gotta be an asylum, surely … and I can’t see it being Holloway women’s prison, can you?

Having mentioned the Ripper, it’s probably a good time to talk a bit about the attacks on him. The first happened on 10 January 1983 in Parkhurst, two years after his trial in 1981. The Ripper’s attacker, James ‘Jock’ Costello, 35, from Glasgow, had the right qualifications for the job — 28 court appearances between 1963 and 1980, nine of them in relation to violence, and 15 appearances resulting in prison sentences. He had been convicted in 1980 for possessing a firearm with the intent to endanger life, possessing a firearm with intent to resist arrest and possessing a firearm without a certificate. He had received a ten-year sentence. He had been diagnosed as mentally ill at Parkhurst, and was awaiting transfer to Broadmoor.

The attack took place while Sutcliffe, the Ripper, was getting water in a plastic bowl. Jock Costello entered the recess and, as Sutcliffe turned to leave, he smashed him twice on the left side of his face with a broken coffee jar. Sutcliffe, the lucky bastard, managed to push him away, but by this time he had four nice wounds requiring a lot of stitches. One deep cut ran five inches from near his mouth to his neck, leaving a nice Mars bar, and another was 2⅕in long, running from his left eye to his ear. He also had two smaller cuts on the eyelid and below the eye. The Ripper had lost about a pint of blood and had gone into a mild state of shock. He required an operation to repair superficial muscle damage. So you see, these attacks on monsters are well worth it … it gets the desired result and leaves them with a label.

The Home Office doc and a visiting professor soon sectioned the Ripper off to Broadmoor under the Mental Health Act. In September 1982, my old friend, the prison medical officer Dr David Cooper, and a consultant forensic scientist, Professor John Gunn, both recommended that Sutcliffe should be transferred to a top-security mental hospital under Section 72 of the Mental Health Act. Section 72 states that the transfer to a mental hospital cannot be made without the approval of the Home Secretary. In December 1982, the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, rejected the transfer, saying that Sutcliffe would remain at Parkhurst in the public interest. Good on Willie Whitelaw to make this move; the Ripper was done good style by Willie’s insistence that he stayed at Parkhurst.

The new Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, finally transferred Sutcliffe to Broadmoor on 27 March 1984. Now bear in mind that Jock Costello, the man responsible for the Ripper needing stitches in his face, has already been transferred to Broadmoor … good on you, Leon – method in your madness! Get Jock to Broadmoor first and then send the Ripper on to him.

When Jock Costello was asked what had happened, he said that Sutcliffe had attacked him. Sutcliffe said, ‘As I was turning the tap off I became aware of someone else in the recess. I didn’t pay particular attention to who it was. I took about two strides, that’s all, and all of a sudden I was the subject of a particularly nasty, unprovoked attack. The first thing I was aware of was a glinting coming from a glass container. I saw it glinting just before it hit my face. That was the first I saw of it when a person used it to cause severe damage.’

The Ripper pointed to the left side of his face. ‘It hit me there. He had time to smash into my face twice before I could do anything. I just put my arms out. Before I held him at arm’s length, the glass smashed on the floor. I quickly put the bowl in the sink and stuck my arm out to keep him away from me. Blood was coming from his hand and then some hospital officers came running in. The only thing I noticed was when it was practically in my face. There was only a thousandth of a second before it smashed into my face. There was no chance to avoid it or anything.’

Yeah, just the same sort of chance he gave all those innocent women when he disembowelled them.

Costello was committed for trial at Newport Crown Court and was granted legal aid. The magistrates also rejected a request for the trial to be held at Winchester Crown Court. James Costello, just as I had in my last trial, had dismissed all his lawyers and was defending himself.

Would you believe that the prosecutor, Christopher Leigh, told the jury to put anything they knew about Peter Sutcliffe from their minds? Is he for fucking real! Sutcliffe spent over two hours in the witness box swearing Costello’s life away; he might as well have brought a packed lunch.

When Jock Costello questioned the Ripper — several times they had a verbal ding-dong — the Ripper admitted that he had become ‘a cell recluse’, and didn’t want to mix with other prisoners.

Jock claimed the Ripper attacked him after a confrontation between the two of them when Jock said the Ripper had ‘censored’ an article in the Sun newspaper about the January prison siege at Parkhurst. The Ripper admitted that he had blotted out an article about vice and prostitutes in the Sun newspaper with his artist’s paint, and occasionally cut out libellous comments before passing it on to other cons.

During his testimony, the Ripper said to Jock, ‘I am being generous answering these questions, because you need all the help you can get from psychiatrists, not from the courts.’ After all that, the judge ordered a retrial. He wouldn’t give a reason; now that’s what I call insanity!

The evidence was again presented to the new jury. Jock Costello and the Ripper again clashed. When Costello suggested that Sutcliffe had attacked him, Sutcliffe replied, ‘I didn’t, and you know it. There was no question of any argument or fight.’

Jock asked, ‘Have you ever thought you heard me say I was going to kill you?’

‘Yes, at the time of the incident. But I didn’t put it in my statement to the police because I could not swear to it.’

Jock asked, ‘Do the voices tell you to attack people?’

‘You won’t raise that with me. You are getting into something you can’t understand.’

Dr Cooper agreed that the Ripper was mentally ill at the time of the attack.

Jock asked, ‘Would his mental illness make him likely to attack someone?’

Dr Cooper replied, ‘Women,’ and said it would be unlikely that the Ripper would ever attack a man.

The Ripper was becoming braver when he started giving Jock the lip. ‘I answer questions like that to qualified people, not idiots like you.’

Jock responded, ‘You are the one that has got the scar.’

The jury found Jock Costello guilty, by a ten to two margin, of wounding the Ripper with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm. I hope if you were one of the jurors that you never have to see any member of your family on the mortuary slab after someone like the Ripper has finished with them. Jock Costello was sentenced to a further five years. Judge Lewis McCreery said to Jock, ‘You inflicted appalling injuries on Sutcliffe. You are one of the most dangerous and evil men it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.’ What about the Ripper? Wasn’t he one of the most evil and dangerous men that Judge Lewis McCreery has had the misfortune to encounter?

Jock told the judge, ‘I don’t understand how any man can get sentenced for using too much violence against a guy who has killed 13 people and had me by the throat. I know I am a violent man. I was not well at the time. I was on my way to Broadmoor.’

In 1996, Jock told the Daily Record, ‘We were both in the Parkhurst psychiatric wing. I was doing 22 years for carrying a gun and resisting arrest. Peter Sutcliffe was always swaggering about with his minder, a nutter called Wakefield. So I got my chive and done him when his minder was slopping out. I remember Sutcliffe roaring like a wounded animal.

‘My original diagnosis at Broadmoor was that I was a psychopath. The consultant read this out in court and the newspapers took it up, which was degrading. I felt Sutcliffe was a psycho, but not I. I hadn’t slaughtered all those women. But then I was re-diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic when I admitted hearing voices.’

Paul Wilson carried out attack number two on the Ripper in Broadmoor on 23 February 1996. Paul, a big guy, was a blagger who had been diagnosed as mentally ill; he tried to strangle Sutcliffe. On Henley Ward on a Friday night, Paul knocked on the Ripper’s door and asked whether he could borrow a video. The flex from a pair of stereo headphones was the tool Paul used to try and strangle the Ripper.

The battle was on, but the Ripper had managed to scream for help. Two other murderers — Kenneth Erskine, the Stockwell Strangler, and Jamie Devitt — rats that they are, ran to help the Ripper. Nurses then took Paul to an isolation unit — probably the plastic room! Like me, Paul has a deep hatred of monsters, and told the staff that he resented being locked up with them. Although I wasn’t at Broadmoor, news travels fast in the system so all the details are 100 per cent reliable.

The staff had been told not to talk about it. Broadmoor had not called the police in to investigate. Broadmoor’s general manager, Alan Franey, said, ‘You know I cannot and will not comment on any incident which involves one of my patients, especially one who is of such high profile. It is hospital policy not to refer to individual patients and I have to respect that confidentiality.’

The police said, ‘We are surprised we were not asked to investigate but Broadmoor appears to be a law unto itself.’ Although the police later investigated the attack, the Ripper did not press charges.

Attack number three on the Ripper came on 10 March 1997, when Ian Kay stabbed him in the eyes with a Parker rollerball pen. I think we’ll rename Kay ‘Rollerball Kay’!

Rollerball Kay had been jailed for eight years in December 1991 for nearly killing a shop assistant and for carrying out a series of 16 robberies on stores in London.

Within two hours of Rollerball Kay being released on home leave from prison, he had robbed a post office. He was again given home leave in August 1994 and failed to return. Between August and November of that year, he later admitted to seven robberies, a theft and an attempted theft, all on Woolworth’s.

In November 1994, Kay was charged with the murder of Woolworth’s have-a-go-hero assistant manager John Penfold. Kay had stabbed the assistant manager through the heart with a kitchen knife before grabbing two 50p coins from the till, which he dropped as he ran to a nearby getaway car.

Psychiatrists said Kay was suffering from an abnormal personality disorder, and it was argued at his trial that he was unable to control his violent impulses. His plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility was dismissed and Kay was jailed for a minimum of 22 years in 1995. Later, after showing signs of mental illness, Kay was transferred to Broadmoor.

There are a number of stories as to how the Ripper was attacked. One is that he had been sitting in his room in Henley Ward when Rollerball Kay burst in and, before staff could reach them, an argument had broken out. After a scuffle, the Ripper was penned in both eyes. It was believed that Rollerball Kay was padded up a couple of doors away from the Ripper and that he objected to being so close to one of Britain’s most notorious monsters. Let that be a warning to all the other monsters!

Rollerball Kay had made a couple of attacks on patients in the months leading up to penning the Ripper in his eyes … practice makes perfect! I have to wear special glasses with darkened lenses to shield my eyes from bright lights; all the years of being in artificial light has fucked my eyes — now maybe the Ripper knows what it’s like to have bad eyes.

The Ripper was taken to the specialist eye unit at Frimley Park Hospital, near Camberley, Surrey. The following day he was again taken to Frimley Park Hospital where the eye specialists gave him the good news — ‘We can’t save the sight in your left eye,’ while his right eye was likely to have impaired vision.

Thames Valley Police charged Rollerball Kay with attempted murder. On 27 January 1998, Kay was in Reading Crown Court, where he admitted the charge of attempting to murder the Yorkshire Ripper. How can a man who is in a mental health establishment be prosecuted and taken to court when he’s been declared mental? Suddenly a man is sane enough to stand trial!

The Ripper was meant to be murdered by having his throat slit open with a razor blade embedded in the end of a toothbrush, but staff could not find the blade. Rollerball Kay told police, ‘I was going to ask for an envelope, walk into the room and cut his jugular vein on both sides and wait there until he was dead. Killing has always been in my mind, ever since I’ve been here [Broadmoor]. In hindsight, I should have straddled him and strangled him with my bare hands.’

As well as the pen attack, Rollerball Kay had gone into the Ripper’s room with a piece of electrical flex, intending to strangle him. Rollerball Kay said, ‘I shut his door and attacked him. I started to stab him in the eyes and throttle him. My objective was to kill him, and I tried to do it as best as I could. I could not be bothered to use the flex in the end. I should have kneed him in the face a few times, straddled him across his body and throttled him with my bare hands.’ Too fucking right.

Now this is insanity at its best. Kay was asked why he had tried to kill the Ripper and he said, ‘Because it was the Devil’s work … God had told him to kill 13 women, and I say the Devil told me to kill him because of that.’

Mr Justice Keene, sentencing Rollerball Kay to be detained without restriction of time under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983, told him, ‘You admitted your intention to kill him. It must cause some public concern that you were able to carry out such an attack. You are clearly a very dangerous man, indeed. I’m satisfied you are suffering from a psychiatric disorder and that you ought to be detained in a hospital for medical treatment.’

Now I know I’ve had one or two bad words to say about old Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, but this time I praise him, ’cos he refused to move the Ripper from Broadmoor when the Ripper’s family requested he be moved to Ashworth Special Hospital. The appeal to the Home Secretary was turned down. You know, I’m beginning to see method in all this madness.

Prisons are full of strange people. I met a real transsexual in Hull who had real tits and was waiting for the op! Nice legs, firm arse, she/he did stir my loins, I must admit. But I have to say now … I just couldn’t — could you? Makes me feel ill. Personally, I see them as freaks, fucking freaky people. But I also feel sad for them, as it’s not their fault; they should be shot, put them out of their misery!

I’ve learned to understand it. I can smell it coming! It’s an inner sense, it’s no secret; I love mad people, they’re unique.

Insanity comes in many forms, as we’ve seen — sexual psycho, depressive, schizoid, psychosis. Whatever, it can’t be cured; well, it can … with a bullet. They shoot a mad dog, so why not a madman? That’s the cure! But they don’t want to shoot us, they just cage us for ever, use us as guinea pigs. See how long it takes us to crack!

So what the fuck was I doing in these asylums? I’ll tell you the truth, I was lost. I fell over the edge … or was I pushed? I was dangerous, violent and unstable. Yeah, I was insane, it’s always there, deep, sleeping, breathing, living, it’s a hell within! And believe me now when I say, at times, it’s a comfort to have. It can save your life or end it. Some give up and kill themselves. They can’t live with it and they can’t live without it!

I lived with the screams; I cried and laughed with my fellow madmen until I felt the pain. Mental pain is second to none! Your eyes begin to see things a normal person doesn’t see. Mad people pick up vibes, voices and senses of smell. Mad people throw off a musky smell … or is it fear?

Do you know what it’s like to be certified insane? Shall I tell you? It’s crazy … you wake up with a strangeness and you’re a lunatic. On paper, you’re a danger to society. But it’s not until you awake in the asylum that it hits you — BANG! The eyes, the cameras, the white coats, the screams, the stench, the madness and the emptiness. Old men with white beards, then you know the truth. Your room, the chamber pot, the door, the coldness, the damp, the stillness. That fucking smelly, piss-stained bed. The routine and the drugs. God, what’s a guy done to deserve this?

Filth like the Yorkshire Ripper for a neighbour! Paedophiles, granny killers, rapists and arsonists, they’re all there, like the big fat sado-masochist homosexual! One up his arse, two in his mouth and another bashing him with a stick. Even today, the fat pig still loves it. A .38 in the nuts would do him better, or a sawn-off up his arse. I could do that all day long!

Some need to be taken off our planet, permanently. Well, they’re a disgrace to the human race. Me, I’m only gutted the pigs never shot me years ago. It would have saved the 30 years of pain, ’cos that’s how long I’ve been caged up.

Let me tell you about true madness! You start to feel untouchable, your power is awesome! The strength of ten men, you’re invincible … so you think!

They run away from you. Watch them run. Shout. You’re the fear in their eyes! Then you’re left alone, in the silence of madness. The war with yourself begins. The siege of insanity — you can’t win. You never could. You’re just digging your hole, and the crazy thing is, you’re helpless and nothing can stop it. Paranoia sets in, psychosis takes over; fear is non-existent, only death lingers, sanity is no more. Welcome to madness.

Shall I tell you the one sure thing that can and does help control insanity? Love. I’m not saying it cures it, but it helps to humanise it. A cuddle, a touch of kindness, the human touch, a whisper, a long friendship — it helps.

Take my mum. I’d not even swear in front of her — doesn’t that prove my point? If I was depressed and feeling dangerous and my door opened and my mum walked in, I would be cured. When she left, I would be dangerous again.

In my view, prisons and asylums are the insanity. They push and squeeze a man empty. Dry him of all feelings. Destroy the love and fill you with hate. Don’t just believe my words. The proof is behind every door of broken dreams … I rest my case!

I’m often asked, who’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met in the asylums? Well, I’ll tell you … the psychiatrists; they’re lethal! They can kill us legally, pump us with psychotropic drugs, destroy us, make us dribble at the mouth and make us fall to our knees and make us cry in pain — yeah, they’re evil! The only humane one I’ve ever met has been Dr Ghosh, she’s lovely. I’d let her share a tin of pineapples with me any time; she is a wonderful human being with feelings and kindness. Like most Asians, Dr Ghosh is very sincere and warm-natured.

Insanity is in your blood, in your heart and in your being right up ’til the angels come to kidnap you.

Take a prison cell. They lock a man up in it 23 hours out of a 24-hour day, month after month, year after year — four walls, a door and just emptiness. No pets, no colour and no stimulation. After so long, the man becomes grey in colour. The skin turns grey with the lack of air; he looks old and haggard, no sparkle in his eyes, just black holes. He talks to himself; he laughs, he forgets and he cries … he becomes depressed. He’s alone, he curls up in the foetal position, sucking his thumb; he goes to sleep with a smile and wakes with a smile. The madness sets in. They drove him mad — he loses touch with reality.

The world has passed him by; he survives from one meal to the next, as tomorrow they may throw it on him or piss on it or maybe they won’t give him any at all. He complains, but who listens? ‘Yes, sir, we gave it to him but he refused it.’ Or, ‘Yes, sir, we gave it to him but he slung it all over us.’ They lie; they are determined to drive him mad. Why? Because he’s dangerous. He could attack, even kill; they fear him so they have to keep control. They may even kill him and say he’s done it himself.

I’ll tell you what’s insane — Graham Young, Britain’s number one poisoner. He was just 14 years old when he was sent to Broadmoor for attempting to wipe out his family. He managed to kill two of them. So while in Broadmoor, what did they let him do? Guess! You never will. They gave him a job as tea boy and, yes, he was in his element … several of the staff started feeling sick. He was at it again. That’s insane — only a madman would give a poisoner a job as tea boy.

Graham spent years in the asylum, then, after his release, he got a job in a factory and out came the poison again. This time he killed a workmate. He was lifed off, and later died in Parkhurst. I met the guy. I felt sad for him; he was a sick man, a dangerous fucker, but mentally sick. He was also a great chess player.

Another notorious lunatic was Nobby Clarke, a dear friend of mine. Nobby was an old war hero. After the war he could not get out of the violence so he killed a guy and got life. Whilst serving his life, he stabbed a Greek guy in the bathhouse in Parkhurst, and was sent to Broadmoor. Nobby was having none of that, and was later charged with murdering a lunatic, but he was acquitted and was sent back to Parkhurst. Nobby was a great character, a true madman at heart. I loved Nobby. Pure danger. They found him dead in his bed in the hospital wing with the book The Godfather on his chest. Nobby once told me, ‘Don’t fight the system unless you’re prepared to die.’ He fought the system all the way like a true madman should … respect!

The mind of a madman is quite unique, complicated, erratic and even amazing. That’s why I put my brain up for auction! The winning bidder was Andy Jones of the Crime Through Time museum, in Newent, Gloucestershire. Andy bid £2,000, and do you know why I want him to have it? Because Ronnie Kray’s brain was stolen out of his head — after he died, of course, although some might say it was stolen years before he died. It took six months for the authorities to hand it back and, even then, how do we know it was his brain?

No, I don’t want some Home Office pathologist sitting with a stick prodding my brain after I’m gone; mark that down as my legal request. Andy Jones gets my brain unless I say (in writing) otherwise!

Many geniuses were insane; it’s a thin borderline. Hitler almost ruled the world; some say he was insane. Doesn’t that prove my point? Madmen like Hitler are dangerous; it’s their unpredictability. It’s the despair that pushes a man over the edge, and then he becomes a madman — pain, mental agony, the wanting and waiting to be free.

To smell a flower, to see the sky, to lie on the grass, to have some woman’s touch, to love, to possess things, to smile, to live normally, a madman forgets all this, he always sees blackness. Sure enough, in his subconscious mind he sees rainbows, but the madness gives off a cloud of hopelessness. Nobody trusts him, yet is he a threat to humanity?

I’ve met all the best loons; the ones who just flip and kill five or six or ten people amaze me. Michael Ryan — responsible for the Hungerford Massacre — his classic words before he shot his own brains out were, ‘I wish I had stayed in bed.’ He wasted 14 innocent people including his mum, and he wished he had stayed in bed. Doesn’t it amaze you?

Why did he do it? How? What reason? I’ll tell you — insanity. It’s in us all. A small problem can trigger it off, and then you are capable of the most evil acts. Thankfully, most of us never lose a grip on reality, but for those who do — believe me, it’s a dream.

From the psychotic who cut his mum’s head off to the schizoid who shot a man walking a dog, thinking he was the devil, they’re both insane.

Senility — isn’t that a form of insanity? And we all face it if we live long enough. You’re gonna get to the stage where you forget if you had a shit, then it’s too late … your pants are full up! You babble like a baby, you forget your own name — that’s insanity and it’s gonna happen; your brain seizes up and you become a cabbage.

Insanity — most run from it, as they fear it. What about epilepsy. If you see a man in a fit, what do you do? He’s frothing at the mouth, rolling about on the floor, his face is turning blue and he pisses himself. You’d probably walk by ’cos you’re afraid he’s a druggy or an alcoholic. You might think he’s a rabid madman, but he is neither. Epilepsy is not insanity, but to you it looks mad; if it’s not the norm, then it’s dangerous to you. You fear what you don’t know. Nobody is blaming you; it’s only a natural reaction to walk away. It may be contagious, that’s your immediate fear.

Some mad people will smash their skulls against a wall, so because of that, after being sedated, they’re put in a restraint and placed in a padded room. Why do they smash their heads off the wall. Probably because they want to smash your head against the wall instead, but they can’t get to you so they do it to their own head. Have you thought it could be to take away their mental pain? By smashing their head it becomes a physical pain, which in turn acts as a distraction and helps take away the mental pain. That’s my theory.

Pain is a lot to do with madness, as it’s an inward pain, like a guilt-ridden depression that comes and goes. Some depressions are a killer and will drive you to suicide, a sense of hopelessness. You lose the fight, you let it conquer you, you let it become the master and you crack. You need to escape yourself so you have no choice but to die. I’ve seen it too many times, and believe me it’s a terrible feeling of despair. They die, but the death never goes away for those left behind.

Take a hanging suicide. It’s not as simple as you might think. The people who have to cut them down and attempt to save them have to live with that for ever. The face, the horror, that protruding tongue, those bulging eyes, the smell of shit and the stink of piss. That final zip of the body bag shuts the despair of it all away! Then the smell of death lingers on for days, weeks after. The atmosphere, the pain … why? ‘Could I have helped?’ ‘Was it me?’ People are left traumatised. I’ve been there, believe it, it’s a form of madness for us all.

Psychopaths? Yes, it’s insanity, but it’s the coldest form of insanity. They are heartless and soulless. Dangerous beyond your wildest imagination, they are the madmen nobody wants. Doctors fear them. Asylums don’t want them. So many must live in prisons under maximum-security conditions, mostly in isolation.

So what causes such men to act so violently? A brutal childhood or are they just basically evil beyond help? How can a man put a gun to someone’s head and say, ‘Bye, bye,’ and blow someone’s brains out, laugh and walk away to enjoy a bag of fish and chips?

How can a man pick up a baby and throw it out of a twenty-fourth-floor window? How can a man knife to death three old-age pensioners at a bingo hall and steal their pensions? How can a 19-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman mug and kill a pensioner for her fish supper? Yet they do and they get a laugh out of it. Not all psychos are like this … some are just totally evil.

I know one who is an armed robber and a contract killer; he would shoot his own granny if the price was right. Be thankful those types are a rare breed, but they do exist. They live out there on the streets; they are killing machines. Professional psychos.

So what turns a man into an insanity machine? What makes predators of men? They are motivated by one thing — insanity! And I’ll tell you what’s insane — Broadmoor doctors, they’re all nuts. They try to rehabilitate people like the Ripper, but what for? Rehabilitate him for what? The cunt will die inside. There is nothing to rehabilitate him for. Why not just kill him now and get his brain out on the laboratory table. Why rehabilitate a monster who will never see the light again?

I’ll tell you what’s insane, Sir David Ramsbotham’s (the former Prisons Inspector) report on HMP Woodhill’s CSC unit, which condemned it as ‘barbaric’ and ‘inhuman’, but there are still 30 of them living in it. So what good are reports?

I’ll tell you what’s mad — letting the nonces in HMP Whitemoor work in the kitchens and giving them the best jobs. Why?

I’ll tell you what’s insane — making documentaries of monsters and letting them speak, but they will not allow me to speak. Why can’t I speak? What about all this? Isn’t it all mad? Am I insane? Well, I am a problem; I’m a serial hostage-taker, the only one in Britain. Lots say I’m mad, but am I? It’s so easy to wrap a guy up and demand something, but it’s not as easy to release him. A siege is madness; the longer it goes on, the madder it gets. A gun would solve the problem.

I believe the negotiations are mad; they want blood and they want a bad end so they can all get sick leave, because they’ve been traumatised. ‘Oh, that nasty Bronson has upset me, my nerves have gone. I need £50,000 compensation and six months on the sick … I may even write a book!’ They’re all mad, seekers of sympathy; I call them ‘maggots of madness’; I’ve more respect for the hostage.

I’m often asked, ‘Charlie, did any of them hostages fill their pants?’ Yes, several, and it’s not nice for me to smell it. I hate the smell of shit! How do those sewer workers put up with it? In fact, how do the queers put up with a shitty dick? It sort of makes me feel ill. Still, each to their own, I say!

Now where was I? Oh yeah, sieges. It’s dangerous and exciting and it’s actually a buzz. I’m often asked why do I do it. Simple … I like to cause their insane system some problems. They deserve to be destroyed. I’ve got a pathological hatred for the plums up in Prison Service headquarters, and I give them problems. Or, I should say, did give them problems, as I’m now retired from sieges. In fact, I’m now a pacifist. I’m a peace-dweller! I’m on a mission of love. Well, ’til some cunt upsets me!