When Tommy Robinson walked out of prison this week, he was unrecognisable. The far-right activist, who was jailed for contempt of court, was sporting a huge bushy beard as he emerged from HMP Woodhill. Robinson looked more like a man who had been marooned on a desert island, or lost in the mountains, than someone who had spent a few months in a Category B prison in Milton Keynes.
Robinson’s prison beard made me think of my own. When I was locked up at HMP Wandsworth, I grew a beard even wilder than Robinson’s. For the first six months in prison, I didn’t touch my facial hair, letting it grow and grow as the fat fell off me, until I looked nothing like my prison ID photo. Eventually I looked so different that I had to ask the prison officers for a new ID card.
For all his faults, Robinson is a master self-publicist
For all that my beard made me look dishevelled, I was comforted by my facial hair.
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