In the summer of 2006, Britain was experiencing a 36-degree heatwave. *Jimmy remembers enduring the swelter from inside Brixton Prison, where “sweat was running down the walls“.
Awaiting sentencing, he was sharing a tiny cell designed for one person, with two other inmates. So when a notice appeared calling on inmates to audition for a play, Jimmy jumped at the chance to escape the boiling-hot compartment.
At his sentencing, the judge took his fledgling career into account and showed leniency. Sixteen years later, by then a successful actor and playwright with awards and Netflix shows under his belt, Jimmy invited that same judge to a one-man play he’d written and performed in. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be free,” Jimmy, 63, explains.
Raised in West London, Jimmy was first incarcerated aged fifteen for stealing money from a market. Over the next forty years, he would spend half that time in UK jails, mainly for bank robbery.
“My first sentence was six years and when you come out from a six-year sentence, it’s hard to get back to society. You’re just unemployable. It’s easy to get back into [crime],” he explains.
“I just couldn’t sign on and get benefits either. I couldn’t see myself living off government money.”
In 2006, after being convicted of stealing £25,000 from a truck delivering cash to a bank, he found himself in Brixton Prison, an austere penitentiary built in 1820.
“It was terrible. There were fights every day… it was the worst time to be in Brixton Prison. I’ve been to loads of prisons, and I found it really tough. You’re all sh*tting and eating in the same room. I’d never been in a situation like that in my life,” he said.
“The whole building needs updating. You’re putting over 1,000 men in a building that was built in Victorian times. There’s no light. It’s all dark and dingy. As soon as you walk in there, you feel like you’re being transported back to Victorian times.”
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The European heatwave of July 2006, brought a cloud of hot and dry air from North Africa. Jimmy had no idea it would prove a critical juncture in his life.
“In 2006, there was a heatwave, and to be in a three-man cell in Brixton was horrific. The walls were literally sweating. You can’t breathe, there’s no proper ventilation,” he says.
That was when he saw the notice saying Synergy Theatre Project, a theatre company working in the justice system, was casting for a play to be performed inside the prison chapel.
“I would do anything to get out of that cell, and that seemed like the perfect vehicle,” he said. “Most prisoners just looked at it and laughed. ‘Men in tights,’ they think.”
Jimmy performed in Elmina’s Kitchen, a show that had recently completed a West End tour, in the chapel to hundreds of prisoners. “The main reason people came was to get out of the cell, maybe to get some drugs. Generally, they wanted to take the piss out of their friends,” he said.
“A prison audience is a hard audience. They will heckle you from start to finish. This is not a West End audience. There is no protocol when it comes to prisoners watching a theatre play… but I knew it was a good play.”
He adds: “The next day, I went down for breakfast, and the prisoners were giving me extra sausage, extra bacon, because I had transformed their lives just for those two hours.”
But when Jimmy arrived in court for sentencing, he was still staring down the barrel of a possible seventeen-year sentence. But the judge gave him a chance.
“When I go for sentencing, the director of the theatre company, Esther Baker, told the judge that, if he was to release me, she’d take me on a theatre tour,” Jimmy remembers.
“So the judge deferred my sentence for twelve months and allowed her to take me on a theatre tour. He says to me: ‘Take this opportunity with both hands because if you come back in twelve months and it hasn’t been a success, you’re going to prison,'” he recounts.
Jimmy, then in his mid-forties, kept to the conditions of his deferral and has never stepped foot inside a prison since — at least as an inmate.
Jimmy’s life has been transformed. He has starred alongside Dustin Hoffman, been cast in Netflix shows, and is now well-regarded in the industry.
He is currently working on Going for Gold, a drama inspired by the true story of Frankie Lucas, a young black boxer.
In 2021, he wrote and performed in a one-man production at the Chelsea Theatre based on his own life. He invited the judge who sentenced, who, due to illness, sadly couldn’t come.
But he did receive a heartfelt letter in response praising Jimmy: “I hope your career continues to flourish,” the judge wrote.
*Jimmy’s real name has been altered to keep his anonymity
