The Secret Life of Prisons · Prison Radio Association

Phil's mic drop

December 19, 2025·46 min·3 clips

Phil Maguire walked away from a staff job on the Jeremy Vine show at BBC Radio 2 to box up surplus CDs and mail them to a prison — and describes it as 'coming home.'

Phil has big news. Paula starts with how strange the setup feels: a Friday release, no guest, and the two of them sitting together near Brixton Prison. The room has a different charge, and that break from routine gives Phil room to talk through a bigger shift in his working life. He never set out to be a chief executive. He was a broadcast journalist at the BBC when he heard about a radio station inside Feltham Young Offenders Institution, and the pull made sense quickly. Radio production and residential social work suddenly belonged in the same room. That crossing became the Prison Radio Association. The work then grew beyond its early shape. Phil traces the move from Electric Radio Brixton to National Prison Radio as a slow expansion of trust, not a neat success story. The Ministry of Justice mattered, but so did the line the station had to keep: close to government run buildings without sounding like government. Paula keeps bringing it back to people. How did creativity survive inside that kind of partnership? Phil answers with quiet pride. National Prison Radio launched in 2009, but what matters to him is that it kept its own voice. The scale lands softly: the world's first national radio station for people living in prison, shaped over years by listeners writing and calling in. By the end, Paula turns the microphone back on Phil and thanks him on behalf of National Prison Radio.

As heard by us

A farewell that treats National Prison Radio as a story of impact, independence, and careful partnership.

Phil's farewell casts National Prison Radio as the product of steady partnership, persistence, and a firm insistence on staying independent. The Friday release and the two-person studio setup add a modest ceremonial note, though the piece keeps its feet on the ground by focusing…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear how a prison radio founder turns a farewell into a careful reckoning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Secret Life of Prisons