ITVEvidently inhaling spice didn’t put Ross Kemp off continuing to film his new ITV series Welcome To HMP Belmarsh, as the former Eastenders star decided to stay in the prison overnight.
In the episode airing tonight, January 16, Kemp records himself talking to the camera while spending the night in a cell.
The 55-year-old struggles to sleep due to the noises around him; in the background you can hear Kemp’s fellow inmates shouting to each other.
ITV/YouTubeDuring the night Kemp contemplates his time in there – and the cell’s previous occupants.
In the video, Kemp says solemnly:
I’m thinking about all the different people who have been in this cell. So, a lot of people have laid here contemplating what they did or didn’t do, how they managed to find themselves here, how long they’d be spending here, plotting revenge… all the regrets.
He goes on to say how hot and stuffy the cells are due to them having no air from having no windows.
Kemp also adds that you’d have to have a strong mentality to be able to survive in there.
In last week’s episode, Kemp inhaled some spice from an inmate’s e-cig, leaving him unable to speak.
ITVIn the shocking scene, Kemp can be seen holding a vape confiscated from one disorientated prisoner before saying ‘It’s a regular vape’ and holding it close to his nose.
He then inhales twice before one of the prison officers tells him, ‘Don’t do too much, seriously.’ Kemp states, ‘I can actually feel that, and I can feel it.’ Looking dazed, he then fails to answer a question posed to him by the cameraman.
The particular version of spice inhaled by Kemp is known as Man Down, with the presenter saying ‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’.
PA ImagesKemp explained:
It is a potentially lethal combination of aluminium cleaner and insect killer, and the man who smoked it has collapsed. Prison officers and medical staff have responded to a Code Blue, where a prisoner has difficulty breathing or is unconscious.
As he is brought round by staff using citrus — which can knock off some of the effects of spice — he stares at me through bloodshot, dilated pupils and screams: ‘Get out of my f*cking cell.’ When I spoke to him the next day, he could not remember meeting me.
I asked him why he smoked the drug in his cell, considering he knew it was potentially harmful, and he told me: ‘It takes me out of here for four days.’ This is life in HMP Belmarsh.
Safe to say this place would get pretty bad reviews on Airbnb.
The latest episode of Welcome to HMP Belmarsh is airing tonight at 9pm on ITV.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.