The Secret Life of Prisons · Prison Radio Association

Holloway | Tamar and Daisy-May Hudson

June 9, 2025·36 min·3 clips

Six women walk back into Holloway Prison before demolition — the clip from the film opens with raw, unguarded words about screams, hair being taken, and using prison as a break from life.

A return through prison gates is the test. Faye is asked to picture a week back inside a women's prison near Manchester, thinking about a sentence she already served. Her first answer is careful. Prison helped bring her to work with the Prison Radio Association, but it also left feelings she had packed away. The memory that lands hardest is small and domestic. She remembers sitting on her bunk at night, unable to hug her children, crying herself to sleep. That sets the tone for everything after it. The talk shifts from whether going back would count as brave to why filming that return should happen at all. Mandy's hesitation becomes the point the episode keeps coming back to. The host stays with her fear that once something is recorded, control can slip away. A promise to let her see the tape before it is used helps, but it does not make the risk disappear. Mandy still worries about what exposure might cost. Daisy May does not smooth that over. She treats the unease as part of the film's truth. Speaking may help healing, but public testimony can also bring judgment. The film is not selling visibility as a cure. For the women, it offers a chance to add context, push back against stereotypes, and say what happened in fuller terms. Control and candour sit side by side. The conversation keeps asking who gets to hold a story after pain, shame, and institutional judgment have touched it. There is warmth here, but it never lets the stakes go soft. By the end, the episode feels less like a chat about a finished film and more like a look at what has to be in place before difficult truth can be spoken.

As heard by us

A humane prison conversation about memory, consent, and the cost of being heard.

The episode follows Faye as she considers what it would mean to go back inside the gates after release, and her answer stays complicated. Prison brought hardship, but it also led to her work with the Prison Radio Association.

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Why you'd press play

You want prison stories told with care and context.

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