Original subtitles

If they'd have told me what was waiting there, I wouldn't have believed them.

Every minute of the day, I always knew someone was watching us.

Look at them, you look at the gun and you think, shit, what have we done? I

like I'd never seen one of them again.

I just remember my heart pounding and thinking, what have we done now?

That wasn't my country. I shouldn't have been there.

There's blood everywhere. I'm in pause.

What the... If you ain't willing to fight for your life, then you ain't

it.

My life in Leicester was dragging me down.

For a young lad at that age, it was boring.

I'd just had enough of waking up, no opportunities, no money in my pocket.

I wanted to run away from everything.

I was working at my uncle's scrapyard.

I was just really depressed.

I wanted to, um, just get away from it all, really.

I wanted a challenge.

I wanted some adventure.

I wanted to go and see a bit of the world.

I'd known Paul about ten years before I got arrested.

This whole story began in the nightclub.

It's a nightclub. I'd been there loads of times.

We'd seen another friend who we'd not seen for a long time in there.

Something stuck out about this guy.

He caught my eye. I looked at him. Well, he looked like something special.

He looked like he'd been away.

He looked healthy in his skin.

He looked well -off. Good clothes, good shoes, good jewellery. He had a lot of

money.

He said he'd just come back from a hot country.

He told us, man, he's very like every young lad's dream.

Nice girl, speeches, armchair.

He said, if you want to remember what I've got, there's the guy over there.

I can put you on to him if you want.

Amy took us over to the Russian guard, Paul and Jim, interested in doing some

business with us. You know, they're good people from the area, seeking customs.

The Russian guy said, have you ever been abroad?

I'd never been abroad before in my life.

He said, would you get a package for me? And I said, what's that then? He said,

well, it's drugs, but I need you to be honest with me and say that you could do

it for me.

I have trust in you.

And we said, well, what's in it for us?

Listen, pay for the ticket, Venezuela.

We'll give you a four -star hotel and money while you're on holiday.

You'll meet someone.

They'll give you drugs.

Everyone will be paid off at the airport, so no one will be stopping

Listen, I'll give you $8 ,000 a year.

Hasn't anyone got caught?

No, we've got gateways. We can get through.

You know what we're doing.

It's an organisation.

But everything's paid off. There's no way you can get caught.

It was offering me an opportunity to go and make something of myself, even

though it may be dodgy, but I've only got to do it once.

That's what we were saying, we'd only do it the one time.

Just the one hit, get the money in.

That'd be it, the start of life, really, for us.

I felt like I was risking nothing.

I'd got nothing.

I've seen that as the head start in life.

That extra money could have made things better for my family.

I can do this.

That's what I thought, that's what I can get away with it.

We was gullible children, as far as I'm concerned, gullible kids.

This guy wanted to do it quick.

He wanted to get this moving as quick as possible. Within a week, everything was

sorted.

In the morning, there's a knock at the door, and it's Jamie.

Get your bags, lads, come on. We've got to go to the airport.

And we knew at that time, that's it.

We looked at each other and said, we've got to do it now.

In the car, I remember it being cold, raining, horrible on the motorway.

I just remember it raining on the dashboard, thinking, get out of this

weather. I'm going to have a break from all this.

I was like, I'm the start of a holiday.

We're going to go and enjoy ourselves.

And I just remember looking up at the sky, being in the clouds.

You see the sunlight beaming in through the window.

It was beautiful.

It was a crazy view.

As we touched down, my heart just got like, whoa, I'm in a different country

now.

As soon as you walk out of the airport, the heat was ready.

I couldn't breathe because it was a changing climate and I wasn't ready for

All I can remember was just the heat was intense.

It took my breath away.

Me and Paul stuck out.

They had toes sticking out of their shoes. It was just a different world

altogether.

There are the palm trees. They're there, mate. They're real.

I've never seen a palm tree in my life. I'm looking at these palm trees. Yeah.

It wasn't expensive until this guy had spent money. It was all professional.

Very nice place. Four star.

Balcony. Everything.

The marble floors and the big pillars and the three, four, five floors

And clear blue water at the swimming pool.

We felt comfortable with it because we thought, this man's put good money into

this. It's not a backstreet fit. It's still looking positive.

I felt free.

I felt this is my life starting and this is what I make of it.

That's the first sense of freedom I ever got.

If they'd have told me what was waiting ahead, I wouldn't have believed them.

Never in a million years I would not have believed what was waiting ahead.

First contact we got was the second day of being at the hotel.

We got the phone call that he was outside the hotel.

Paul was scared like I was.

We knew we had to go ahead with it.

It was full steam ahead from then on.

We got into the back of the Jeep and, like, the Jeep just pulled off.

What you can see is, like, these dark things in the back of this van and these

guns. I'd never seen someone carrying a gun before.

You know, you just look at them and you look at the gun and you think, shit,

this is serious.

This guy's lifting my arm up and I'm thinking, what's he doing? And he's,

trying to measure my... Inside measurement, there.

They said, we need to measure your chest width, hip width and the length of your

chest to the bottom of your stomach.

And we said, what's that for then? He said, well, you need bulletproof jackets

to put stuff in.

And we said, well, won't you see that?

And he said, no, no, you're OK. You wear a shirt, you won't see it.

They were saying that they're going to ring us soon, take us to their

put drugs on us and take us to the airport.

And that's when we knew.

This is it.

That's the day we're going to be waiting for.

And that's when me and Paul actually come to the conclusion that we've just

to enjoy ourselves with what we've got now and get on with it.

Because they gave us a lot of spending money, it was $2 ,000 they gave us. We

were just always doing something.

I was just enjoying my holiday.

We did shopping.

We went on the beach, swimming in the sea.

Surfing. We went on boats.

We were just like part animals, right from the word go.

Drinking in the morning.

Used to go down to the restaurants, ordering all this crab and exotic

We were sitting there with girls.

Being with the girls and clubbing.

It wasn't like a load of young lads spilling beer over each other and things

like that.

The women stood there with champagne glasses and nice sparkly dresses.

It was a different scene altogether.

Wherever we went, we were whistled at and shouted at and loved by everyone.

Everyone was like, well, film stars.

We often thought about getting out of the deal, but we weren't brave enough to

do that. We knew we couldn't just get out of it without anyone having to pay

what we'd already started.

We was offered cocaine by a Dutch guy, Jimmy.

I'd smoked marijuana before, but never cocaine.

I've never tried cocaine before.

Didn't even know how much to take of this stuff.

You know, I just started going mad on it.

You just cut it up and cut it up and make it more lines and more lines.

And I'm just... I've just mustered up too much.

I could feel it racing and everything was just going black.

He started having a seizure where his heart was pumping really fast.

He couldn't breathe and he was sweating and going white.

I was slapping him and trying to wake him up. And I could see again and I get

blurred vision.

Splashing water and, come on, Paul, what's up?

I could feel my chest tightening and I started to panic. I thought I was going

to die.

It scared me. I thought I was going to lose him.

In the end, I thought, that's it, I've got to get you down to the hospital.

It's, like, really, really hot.

My head is now pounding.

I could feel my heartbeat in my head.

I just picked him up and threw him in the back of the taxi.

Told the taxi driver, get to an hospital.

God, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Where's this shit? Why am I talking?

I thought he was going to die.

I'm going to die.

I'm panicking, I'm panicking.

And I carried him into the hospital and got a doctor to come.

They gave me an injection to calm me down.

I'm in this hospital thinking, shit, what have I done?

We slowed the holiday right down after that attack. It just made me think, no,

don't want to be doing this, because it's nearly killed my friend.

I never thought that if I brought this drug into the country that I could be

killing people or that I could be causing any damage to any families or

anything.

It was like a countdown, you know.

God, it's happening now, it's happening.

I just remember being in the hotel.

You can hear life on the street, but inside you know.

You're going to be doing something dangerous.

I got myself into something that I couldn't get myself out of and I started

regret every moment of it.

I started to reminisce back to what

I'd left behind.

Maybe it weren't so bad in the first place.

I spoke to my mother.

I felt like a little boy.

I felt like I was trapped.

You've got to see it for yourself.

No -one's going to help you here.

You've got to do it.

The night before, it was just me and Paul. We stayed in.

We was tossing and turning most of the night.

I was sweating.

Restlessness, couldn't get to sleep, thinking, God, what have I done?

I've got to do it now, there's no looking back, this is it. And when I did

finally go to sleep, it was only for like a couple of hours and I was awake

again.

I was told to meet them outside.

We booked out the hotel.

And, yeah, there they were.

I just remember leaving the beach behind and driving back to Caracas.

It was, like, hectic everywhere.

In the mountains, you can see these shanty houses.

It was just horrendous. I'd not seen that in my life, and I thought, Christ.

I felt like I'd entered a third -world country that wasn't my country.

I shouldn't have been there.

They took us to this apartment, and the apartment just looked dingy.

Like nothing that they expected.

I remember them eating and thinking, you know, what are you eating?

The glamour associated with pop stars.

You associate that with cocaine.

Then you look in the apartment, there was no glamour there.

It was the most scariest part of my life that I've ever experienced.

I didn't understand what they were talking about. I didn't understand what

had in mind. I didn't understand what their next moves were.

We were virtually puppets.

There's no way you could ever argue with them kind of people.

Just got to do what they say.

Unless you wanted that bullet in your head, you couldn't do anything.

I was just there to do what I got to do and then go.

Come away to get out of the apartment, I just remember feeling like, shit, I've

got to do it.

Two guys called me into the room and I stood there and I had to take my shirt

off.

He produced a vest. I just remember it being really, really heavy, and when he

put it on my back, it was like... And I stood with my arms out, and they put the

jacket on me, and I felt the weight pull on my shoulders.

I knew there was far more in the jacket than what the Russian guy had sent us to

collect.

They pulled the cords up the top here and sewn the shoulders, and they made it

so it was tight around your stomach.

There was no way that I could have took this vest off myself.

I remember thinking, this is where you come to get kitted up.

I remember thinking, people have been here before me.

But I knew now I was going to pay for myself.

I just looked at myself in the mirror and I thought to myself, God, what have

got myself into?

But it's already on me now. They've sewed it up to pay for my holiday, to

for everything else.

It's just like walking into a brick wall.

There's no... You're just one way forward now. There is no turning back.

it. You're there.

We waited till the lady gave the nod.

You OK?

Go.

And then they walked us down to the taxi, paid the guy and walked off. And

was the last time we've seen him.

It feels like a straitjacket to be honest with you.

You can't get out of it, and it's just strapped to your... You can feel the

packages digging into the side of your ribs, and you just want to get it off

as fast as you can.

I remember Jim just turned around and said to me, I was scared that people

smell it on us. I was scared that people were watching us as we went to the

airport. I was paranoid completely.

We stopped talking because we didn't know if the cab driver was in on it.

If this taxi driver's involved and we do make a wise move, we will get shot.

You get outside the airport and you just see all the police around you and all

the National Guard in your feet.

Shit.

I was scared, but I couldn't show that I was scared, so I was trying to hide it.

I just remember my heart pounding and just feeling scared, thinking, what am I

going to do now?

We walked to the main entrance to the airport.

I remember I wanted to stay well away from as many police as I could.

Felt like the jackets were obvious, not to see but to feel.

If you bumped into someone, you'd know that there's something there.

I'd been stood in the queue for about 10, 15 minutes.

This guy come up to us, and he's coming, like, quite close to me, this guy, and

I'm thinking, I don't want him to come close to me, because if he touches this,

he's going to know straight away what's on me, and that's it.

Game's over.

He's like, come on, I'll give you an hand. And I've, like, shouted at the

no, I've told you, I'm OK, thank you.

He's like, OK then, OK then, left us.

Jim's, like, looked at me, he didn't need that.

I've turned round to go through the immigration and I can remember seeing

guy standing there with a shirt and tie.

I just remember thinking, once I'm past him, I've done it.

I've had my money.

The corner of my eye, I can see the card at the side of him, and there's this

dog there.

My heart starts racing, trying not to draw attention, looking down. I can see

this dog out the corner of my eye. I'm looking, I'm thinking, God, this is it

now.

The Lord had reassured me that the airport's paid off. You'll be all right,

don't worry.

Now I'm going to see for myself.

Have they paid it off or haven't they?

The dogs were just like, not even interested in me. I'm thinking, well, I

couldn't have sniffed this on me.

This is when I was convinced, yeah, these people have been paid off.

The bloke was speaking to you like he knew me.

Literally speaking to me, you're all right, my friend. Yeah, yeah, no

I'm all right.

That's peace. That was easy.

Went sort of straight through.

I sat down thinking, I've done it.

I thought I've got through the gateway.

And I'm sitting there looking at Paul thinking, yeah, we've done it, mate.

We've done it.

That's it.

I was that confident and I just fell asleep, just dozed off on Jim's

I just sat there waiting.

And you don't want to be sitting there waiting. You just want to get on your

plane and get over and done with.

And that's when paranoia kicked in.

We're just sitting there normally.

Everyone's looking at me and Paul.

There's two men, and they're looking funny at us. I thought they knew

away that we had stuff on us.

Paul fell asleep and landed on my shoulder, like, and I pushed him to say,

people don't look right.

He's getting more and more agitated, more and more. No, no, no, no, I don't

it, I don't like it. I'm going, keep your mouth shut.

Calm down, chill out.

He wasn't paying attention to himself, me.

I must have been killing myself up there then, looking.

I knew they was looking at me.

I thought, come on, let's go and throw this stuff away. Come on, let's go to

toilet and ditch it.

I couldn't just go to the toilet and drop that off.

It just sewed on me anyway. How am I going to get that off?

You can see I'm getting agitated and it's making me feel paranoid as well

I'm getting more nervous and we're just sitting there like thinking, shit, shit,

they're looking at us, they're looking at us.

They shout over the loudspeaker, would you please board such and such a flight

bound for England?

Turned down the tunnel, see these people in front of me.

I just remember, like, looking a bit further past, and then there's these two

guys that had been looking at us.

There's Tyrone, says, just look to your right, and went, shit.

The tunnel just seemed like it was getting longer and longer.

I just focused on getting past that man.

Without him searching me.

Just get on that plane and get past him.

He was virtually staring at us to go to him.

That's how it felt.

Like he knew you had the stuff.

We got right next to the door.

He told me to lift my arms, I lifted my arms like this, and he patted me on the

side. And that's when I thought to myself, shit, and this guy just looked

and he just shook his head.

And I thought, no way.

The world has come tumbling down, I thought.

What have I always gone and done?

They just took me and Jim to this really small room.

They were being loud and threatening.

It was quite scary to not know what they're saying.

You just didn't know what was going on.

That's when you started to think, we're not getting out of here now, are we?

I still got this bulletproof vest on, man. I'm thinking, just please get this

off me now.

I've had enough.

The guy's come up behind me, he's got his pen and knife, he's trying to get it

off.

I just remember taking this jacket off and I just remember hearing the foot

resist. Jacket hit the table.

That's when I knew there was a lot of cocaine in there.

As they pulled them apart, I was scared.

I was like, what have I done?

I just remember thinking, my world, it had come to an end.

I ain't never going to get out of this shit. This is it now.

Felt a deep loss.

I felt like I wouldn't ever get out of the country ever again. I'd never see my

mum and dad again.

And I've... That's it, I blew it.

We were both terrified at that time.

Both absolutely terrified. We thought we were going to die.

They flagged a taxi down outside the airport and we got in the taxi.

It just seems surreal.

We were all that jokes confiscated off of Zoom.

Just these two guys are just going to put us in a taxi and just take us, like,

in the middle of nowhere.

When I pulled up outside the Vega police station and I just looked up at this

big building, five storeys, and every window's got bars on it, well, no -one's

going to take me to a prison, surely, straight away.

I feared for my life when we arrived because we could hear a load of people

shouting in the prison.

You could hear knives hitting bars.

You could just hear that there was uproar going on.

When the police was questioned, they was looking as much as to say, you boys are

going to meet your nightmare in a minute.

Up those stairs is your nightmare.

We walked up the stairs, police station smelled, you know, all the walls

smelled.

We seen three cages, and they're all hanging out of the cages, going, hey,

guy, green guy, and all this, and we're like, whoa.

I had a couple of fingers missing, teeth in a mess.

So I just thought, like, something out of this world.

They're, like, pulling on his jeans straight away, pulling on his clothes.

I've got five people standing around with knives.

And this guy came and he went, you give them your jacket and your shoes, as

they'll kill you.

I just wanted to burst out crying, but I couldn't. I couldn't cry. I didn't want

them to see me cry. I thought, if I let them see me cry, that's it from day one.

I've got to put a face on now.

7 ,000 miles away from home.

My mum's not there to help me.

The guards came to us and it was the first bit of light we'd seen before they

opened the door and his eyes stopped.

That's how bad it was.

They just took us to this room.

The next thing you know, there's a slight thunker everywhere.

James Miles and Paul Loseby were arrested at Caracas Airport with 22

cocaine strapped to their chests.

I've looked at Jim and I just don't know where to put my face and I'm thinking,

my mum's going to see this.

Arrested as they were about to board a flight to London. Their explanation is

that drugs barons forced them into it. This man put a gun to our head. Mum was

going to shoot me. We haven't done nothing.

All I'm here for is a holiday.

All my family, everybody I know, they're going to see this.

And I can't do nothing about it.

I got to speak to my parents a week and a half after being captured at the

airport.

My mum, she said that she loves being whatever I do, it don't matter, I'll

always be her son.

And that was the first time I cried after I spoke to my mum.

I come back and cried.

I said to my mum, sorry, they know what I've done.

They know what I've done there.

I don't know why I left them, I don't know why I left my mum, I don't know why

left that.

I'm really sorry for what I was doing.

I don't think I could have apologised. I couldn't have found words to say

anything. I don't know.

Just, sorry.

There's an atmosphere in the place, and you can cut that atmosphere with a

knife.

When you look at their eyes, they've got no...

No sense of nothing behind him.

I heard someone getting raped.

I heard somebody getting raped.

Knowing that you can't do nothing for him and he can't do nothing for himself.

I don't know, cos he's probably got a gun in the back of his head or in his

mouth. That was the worst.

For me and Paul.

Cos we could hear it, but we couldn't do anything about it.

That was bad.

You are.

You wait to end.

There's nothing you can do.

There's someone coming through that door any time of night.

You never know if there's going to be armed or not armed or what frame of mind

there is going to be in.

Today, in a dramatic and astonishing turn of events, James and Paul were

sentenced to four years for possession of drugs.

but not trafficking.

After being in La Vega for a year and a half, I knew we wasn't getting out and I

knew that no -one could do anything, not even lawyers, and when he wasn't doing

anything, we were stopped.

We managed to get a camera on for Jim's family and basically we just bribed the

policeman to take the camera in there.

I see that that person in that video needs help.

To look at myself like that and see myself in that state, that's not me.

It's like a possession.

You see the dark side of yourself.

At times you just fade off into that just to get your body things in. It was

like, I don't think I'll ever see my mum and dad again.

The English government thought it was protecting us, but me and Paul knew we

more at danger there than we were at maximum security prison.

I'd been warned about it that many times, oh, you don't want to go to the

prisons. They kill each other and you can buy grenades in there and you can

guns.

You don't know whether to believe it when you're in a police station, but yet

felt like I was rotting away in there.

I'd just rather go down fighting and in danger than just, like, rotting away in

this. Little place.

He took us out of the police station, threw us in the back of his National

jeep.

You can just see, like a perimeter, defensive guards standing in these

You think, God, is that something you've seen off a film?

Guards are there to guard the perimeter. The prisoners themselves run the

prison.

Walking in there, seeing the people disfigured, limbs missing, and after

seeing all the guns and all the grenades that went with it, it was ten times

worse than any hell.

I've seen somebody that's been in the police station we've met. He said,

remember what it was like in the police station? I said, yeah. He said, well,

get out of your head.

Because it ain't like it here, mate. It says here, you fought for your life. If

you ain't willing to fight for your life, then you ain't leaving it. This is

hell.

It was very scary because it was a whole big scale of everything.

And we were only two English lads in there.

It was the first week of his being there.

Our cellmate said, have you ever seen anyone die?

We said, no. He said, someone's going to today.

I stood there, chatting away, waiting for this food.

As soon as bang.

Like a ringing in me ear.

I just turned around and just looked at this guy and he's just like gone on the

floor. He's been shot in the head and all his brain's hanging out. There's

everywhere.

And me and Paul just walked there.

Couldn't believe it.

I'd been there two days and someone's just been shot in front of me already.

brain's hanging out all over the floor.

And after that, it was just a normal thing to be doing in prison for them.

Three people a week, four people a week, five people a week.

Just getting killed.

It's all about power, possession.

Who's got the most drugs?

Who's got the most armour?

Who's got the most bullets? Who's got the most grenades?

Laugh doesn't mean nothing. It means a pound at the bullet cost.

And the man who's got the guts to pull the trigger.

You feel like you're ducking and diving for your laugh every day.

You'd lay there at night and think, well, tomorrow, will I get through

Or will I get through this week?

Or will I see my mum and dad again?

You're now living their society and their world, their rules and their laws

where there is no morals.

Morals don't exist.

You just get to the stage where you just become one of them and you just live

like them, you live with them, you do everything that they do just to survive.

I'd been there for four years. One day the embassy came to give us some money

and letters from his family.

She comes round to let people know how the sentences and the cases are getting

on and that me and Jim's names were the first to be called out. We thought it

was coming up for a benefit, ready to go free.

Jackie from the embassy, she was there and she said, the prosecutor, she's not

happy with your appeal.

It looks like you're looking at a ten -year sentence.

And me and Paul were just devastated.

You just feel like exploding.

Literally like kicking the gate straight off.

I just wanted to shoot every human in that room.

I just thought, I'm never getting out of this hellhole.

That was the breaking point. I thought, the English embassy just gave me 10

years. We'll sod the English, I'll be Venezuela.

I might as well say I'm Venezuelan now.

I know I act like a Venezuelan. I live like a Venezuelan.

Three lads just walked up to me with a gun and said, do you want to hang around

with us? And I said, what do you do? They said, we play Russian roulette with

the guns and we shoot people and we'll just mess about.

I said, all right, come on then, let's go and do it. And one day they gave me

this 9mm and I walked around the prison with it to show it everyone.

I'll show everyone that I've got a gun and that I want to use it.

That's the life I want to live.

You see him, he wants to cry, but he can't.

What's the matter? I'm going to show them.

You're going to show them, kid. I'm going to show them you ain't messing

with me. I've had enough.

If anybody's going to come and try and mess around, I'm going to show them

they're going to get it.

And he just became one of them, playing mushroom roulette with guns.

I mean, what kind of normal person does things like that?

The lads wanted to play Russian roulette one day. They just said, have you ever

played it? I said, not really, no.

So the lads span it.

And I've gone, click.

Boy, it's tempting.

And he's done his turn.

Third man's done his.

And there was one lad who weren't even in the gang.

And one of the guys walked up to him and went like that.

And they were lucky it didn't go off.

But the guy was like, whoa.

To see a friend do something like that and play around with their own life, I

knew that he must have been at some serious stage.

As if to say, well, you know what?

Couldn't really give a fuck.

I rang my mum and dad up and said, I don't ever want to see you ever again.

Imagine how that must have been for them.

No self -esteem.

Gone.

No more need to go on in life.

Wanted to end it.

What are you doing? What am I going to do if you're not here with me?

What am I going to do if you go away?

I just wanted to see my mum and dad and my family so bad that I weren't going to

be willing to be taking my own life.

I would have done anything in my means to get back home and see my family and

friends.

Anything.

It was on Saturday, and we heard everyone shouting, here's the judge,

judge.

The judge had come into the actual prison to release prisoners from prison

and then.

So we grabbed all the paperwork.

Me and Jim had just thought we'd try a look, so we just asked if we could see

this judge.

He says, you've got all your credentials, you've got everything you

Yeah, we're going to let you go free.

and me and Paul were just gobsmacked.

Then she says, right, you can go free, but you have to find a job and then go

work every day. In the week, you have to go back to the prison every night up

until 2007.

As soon as I was let free, I was thinking about the escape.

There was no way I was going to stay there after I'd just done five years.

I knew that I wasn't going to stay in that country any longer.

I couldn't wait to go.

In their law, it stated that anybody in their country that says a form of

identification, my ID, was a passport.

As soon as the embassy gave us his passports back, we could see that we

make the escape.

We went together.

That would be the craziest thing we could have done because we were coming

the country together.

So we both planned that we'd leave separate.

So we arranged that Jim would go through the Venezuelan port and I'd go through

to Colombia.

It was the first time in four years that I'd been separated from Jim.

It felt strange for my friends to go the other way.

I got no money or nothing. I got a load of clothes off of a friend. I took the

clothes and I sold them all.

That's what I got my bus fare to Columbia with.

Got on a coach to Columbia.

That's it now. I'm leaving Venezuela for good.

I ain't coming back.

I decided to go on the run for a week until my father came. He was going to

me money to buy a ticket so I could get out of the country.

The flight got cancelled and he came the week after, so I had to stay on the run

for another week until my father came.

I stayed right underneath the station because they don't look where it's

obvious. They were lucky for me and they couldn't find me.

When I got to the Colombian border, I should have gone through the

but I didn't want to bring any tension to myself.

Everyone's being checked.

If they'd have caught me, they would have sent me back to prison for six

That was the risk I took to get back to my country.

God, I don't know if he didn't drive straight past, didn't even pull him

didn't say nothing to him, didn't even... nothing.

On the other side, I rang my mum.

I said, look, I've done it, Mum.

I'm a Columbia mum.

I said, I need you to send me some money.

I met my dad at the airport when I collected money up in there.

My dad left that night and he says to me, just ring me in the morning and make

sure you get a ticket to Columbia.

I said, I will.

When I got to the Western Union in Columbia, it was something like £1 ,800

mum would send over.

And £1 ,800 in Colombian pesos is like...

Wads. From there, direct to a travel agent. This is on the same day.

Flight to England, please.

How far went to the airport?

That was more terrifying than when I sat there with the drugs.

If I'd have been spotted by a policeman at the airport, I think I would have

tried to kill the policeman at the time or him kill me.

Because there's no way I would have gone back to prison.

I thought, oh, my God, I've got to go through this again.

And it's like, this airport is, like, five times as big and, like, it's

Colombia, it's Bogota.

Their immigration has got to be tight.

But some more courage up.

Went straight through the immigration, didn't even look at me, didn't even

batter an eyelid.

And I knew then, once I'd passed that immigration, I was sat down in that

departure lounge.

It's over.

It's over.

I'm coming home.

I got off the plane in Columbia.

I've walked down, and I'd just seen this hand that I recognised, and I thought,

I know that hand.

And as I've turned my body around to see who it is, there's Paul sitting there,

and we've both looked at each other and gone, we've done it, mate, we're free,

we're going home.

And we just hugged each other and said, yeah, we're going home.

That's it.

It's all over.

And there it was, there was my light at the end of the tunnel.

That plane waiting for me to stand on it and go home.

Yeah, my nightmare is just finished. I'm going home to my mum.

I don't feel guilty anymore because I've come back.

I've been back in England six years now and I've made amends.

And like everybody else, we all do wrong.

Just try and make up for it and do better.

Make your parents proud of you and the people that love you are proud of you.

Because they're the ones that count at the end of the day.

For me now, focus on my son and just give him the best in life.

That's my future.

I want to be a person that's there for his son, works for his son, secures his

son. Not someone who's not there for his son, who's in prison, showing his son

the wrong sides.

I'm just there to get on with my life now.

Just... move forward.

Everything forward.

Those bloody vampires are

everywhere. Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise star in Interview with the Vampire, next

Five.