Marconi Calling

For most of my sentence, the prisoners’ greatest comfort was a decent radio. A distraction, a source of news and entertainment, a portal away from the grey walls.

Not that we were allowed any old radio. It could only receive AM Medium Wave, not FM. And it couldn't incorporate a transformer, allowing it to be run from the mains.

Choosing a radio was a serious matter. Quality of reception and sound was important, it being a companion for every waking hour. And running costs. A few batteries here and there for you rich buggers outside are a financial irrelevance, but in prison they are not!

Long term prisoners often aspired to obtain a Roberts Rambler. Not for the Royal Warrant, but because the sound quality was wonderful and - crucially - it would run for months on a single PP9 battery.

This led, as all things in prison do, to a tiny tributary in the river of exchange. Guys with big radios that ran on lots of batteries, or PP9's, passed their "dead" batteries on to people with smaller radios. Needing less power, these little radios would happily run for a while… and so on.

And I bet you didn't realise that you could extract a few hours more juice by heating a battery in a jug of boiling water? Or by giving it a roughing up?

The poorest (or meanest!) bloke would have a tiny radio. Connected to this by long lengths of wire may be dozens of cast-off batteries from other people. I've seen a dozen PP9's wired to power a 3-volt radio.

The introduction of in-cell electricity and FM changed the whole culture around radios. The permitting of TVs has nearly, but not totally, killed it.