Good evening.

Good evening everybody. I am delighted to be with Lady Val Corbett this evening.

You know, Prison Reform is at the heart of this channel.

My internet presence started in 2004 of my blog,

John's Jail Journal exposing the conditions in Sheriff Joe O'Pio's jail.

And we have continued in that vein ever since.

So I was really happy with my friend Andrew Pritchard

organized this with Val for this evening because Val is doing such important work which is what we are going to get to.

So huge thank you for coming on first.

Val? for coming on first. Well. Okay thank you very much indeed for having me short and welcome to anybody who's up there listening to this. I suppose I should tell you how I got into prison reform. First of

what I was born in Cape Town and my dream was to come to Fleet Street which was

in the Mecca of journalism and so I did and my my career has been in media so I worked for

national newspapers magazines BBC television script writing for television novels and so on.

But I was married to a member of parliament and he was somebody I admired,

apart from the love stuff I actually admired him and especially

his private members bill which is still law today which is granting a lifetime anonymity for rape victims in the courts and the media.

But he was obsessed with politics and I remember once lying in bed reading and I happened to look over and see him looking at me in such a loving way and so I said softly you know what are you thinking about and he said the Housing Finance Act. So right away I knew that this was somebody who was

absolutely set in politics. He was my political mentor, my soulmate, and when he died in 2012 after a very

short battle with lung cancer, I was obviously bereft. And you know when somebody dies you get lots of

cups of tea and support but then after a few weeks or months or so, they reckon you'd be able to manage, but it's then that reality really strikes.

And so it was at that stage when I was looking at television trying desperately to find something to distract me and I came

across the rider cup of golf competition between America and Europe.

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