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- BANGED UP ABROAD: HELLHOLE -

abject fear for our lives. For four years, our lives were only worth eighty pence – the price of a bullet in those jails. In fact, scratch that: our lives were worthless, because knives were made from sharpened prison bars, and they were free.

Humans are at the top of the food chain, not just because we're the cleverest beings on Earth, but because we are the most ruthless. During my time in the jails, I became aware that I was capable of unspeakable acts of violence. I realised that if you treat a man like an animal for long enough, then he becomes one – especially when he is caged. While we were in prison, we both did things we're not proud of. But we did them to survive. It was the law of the jungle. It was do or die.

An old friend we randomly bumped into in a nightclub had been smuggling cocaine, and he set it all up for us. Him and a drug smuggler I'll call the Russian (I won't use his real name, as he told me back then that he'd kill me if we ever grassed him up).

The worst I'd ever done before Venezuela was smoking spliffs and getting involved in a punch-up outside a boozer. I'd never even seen cocaine, let alone taken it or smuggled it. Cocaine was for rich people and the famous, not for ordinary, working-class lads like us. We just wanted to get rich quick, and set ourselves up back home in business.