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Alcohol and drugs, even sex with visiting females, were readily available. Steele, Tate, Nicholls and the Whomes brothers would often have alcohol and Chinese takeaways smuggled in to them and sit up late into the night eating, drinking and having a laugh.
    One afternoon, Tate and John Whomes were walking back to the unit after meeting John’s brother, Terry, who had dropped off new T-shirts and a couple of bottles of whisky. John had put on the T-shirts and hidden the whisky in his jacket pockets. Tate and John had then given Terry an order for Chinese food, which he was going to deliver later that evening when it got dark. As Tate and John neared the unit, a prison officer came out and asked, ‘What have you got on you?’
    ‘We haven’t got anything,’ Tate and John replied.
    The officer said that he had watched them meet somebody, and therefore if they did not come clean, he was going to search them. John took his prison sweater off, then the T-shirts his brother had given to him. ‘Here,’ he said, throwing them at the officer to catch. ‘That’s all I was given – T-shirts, which we are allowed to have anyway.’
    The officer said that without prior permission nothing was allowed to be handed in, therefore John would be charged. He told Tate and John to follow him before turning and marching off towards the unit.
    ‘You can’t nick John for those T-shirts,’ Tate said.
    ‘I can, and I’m going to,’ replied the officer.
    ‘You don’t understand. I’m telling you that you can’t and won’t nick John for those T-shirts, or I will fucking kill you.’
    The officer did not reply, he just continued walking. When John entered the unit, he took his jacket off and gave it and the whisky to another inmate. John and Tate were then called into the office, where Tate began to tell the senior officer what he could and couldn’t do regarding John and the T-shirts. ‘He’s just a young boy,’ he said. ‘If you nick him for that, it will increase tension on the unit and there will be trouble. Serious fucking trouble.’
    The senior officer said that the matter would be considered and they would be informed of any decision in due course. Tate and John left the office and went up to their rooms. Later that night, Terry arrived outside the rear of Cosford Unit with the Chinese meal. Jack leapt over the balcony, ran over to Terry, collected the meal and made his way back to John, Tate, Steele and Nicholls, who were already busy consuming the smuggled bottles of whisky.
    The next morning, John was working at the prison stables when two officers arrived and told him that he was being taken to the punishment block. A few minutes after being placed in a cell, John heard shouting and realised Tate was also going to be put in a cell. Unlike John, six officers were escorting Tate because he was being uncooperative, calling them wankers and arseholes. Tate and John spent the night in the punishment block but were able to talk when let out of their cells for meals and showers.
    Tate told John that nothing would happen, that they would only be reprimanded. But the following morning they were told they were being sent to HMP Camp Hill on the Isle of Wight. Tate told John that he was going to feign a back injury so they would diagnose him as unfit to travel. He lay on the cell floor, writhed about and screamed in agony while clutching his back. John alerted the prison officers and they called for the prison gym orderly, who was trained in first aid. The orderly entered Tate’s cell and, after five minutes, emerged saying that Tate was unfit to travel to Camp Hill. The only prison Tate could be sent to was one with a prison hospital. HMP Highpoint, which they were told was just as relaxed as Hollesley Bay, had a hospital and was just down the road in Newmarket. The following morning Tate and John were handcuffed and taken from Hollesley Bay in a van.
    Later, Tate told John that the gym orderly who had been to assess his