Contemplating Dolly’s three biggest assets, one of them her voice, he sang his little heart out.

The three wardens and the prisoner all groaned as the first waves of music wafted through the grille.

Jones was still singing at the top of his voice when he saw the skip lorry crossing the road ahead of him and put his foot instinctively on the brakes. The skip lorry was parked across both lanes of the road, stopping all traffic.

He was too late to see the Mercedes van skid across the road behind him.

Closing his eyes, he realised he was caught up in a jump. Opening the grille behind him, he shouted through to the warders: ‘Keep your cool, we’re being jumped.’

He heard three voices shout out: ‘Turn that fucking cassette off!’

Jonnie H. was on the Panda car before they could call in. Thrusting the sawn-off shotgun in through the window, he shouted, ‘Out! Fucking out! Out!’

The constant shouting frightened the police officers. Getting out of the car, they watched as Eric ripped out their radio. He then removed their walkie-talkie radios and told them to follow him to the sweatbox.

A woman wearing a fur coat and driving a Mercedes Sports handed her keys over to Jonnie H. with the plea, ‘Please give them back to me. I really have to be home for the children.’

Jonnie laughed outright and threw the keys into the field beside them.

No one refused their car keys and everyone was quiet, watching the excitement around them.

In the sweatbox Peter Jones was feeling frightened but protected. He knew that the windscreen was bullet-proof and he sat with his arms folded, waiting for the jumpers’ next move.

His face soon took on a different expression when Eric walked towards him with the Armalite.

The three wardens in the back of the van heard the sound of the shot as it hit the windscreen, closely followed by two more. They were terrified.

Peter Jones pushed himself down in the driver’s seat, and the shots whistled past his head. He stayed down there, praying that the men would just go away and leave him alone. Suddenly, he smelt the petrol. Sitting bolt upright, he saw it being poured inside the hole in the windscreen, its fumes making him gag.

The wardens smelt it through the metal grille and one of them blurted out: ‘It’s fucking petrol! They’re going to burn us out!’

David Harker, the oldest and most intelligent there, said, ‘Then they burn him out as well, don’t they?’

The wardens looked over at the prisoner, who was laughing at them. Once more pandemonium ensued.