Greg Newbold

Yeah, I was the first speaker. I was the drug dealer. Kess was second. Murray Kess, well, he was a lifer. He'd killed his wife. He shot her, but always denied his guilt. He was a fundamentalist Christian. And then there was Brian Agnew, who was a safe blower and a bank robber. Gosh. And he was an old hand. He was a very good debater.

And who was in the other team, do you remember? Yeah, Bain Huggett was the lead speaker, and he was a drug offender. He's dead now, unfortunately, he died of liver cancer. But he had Hep C, and that triggered the liver cancer, I think. We all got Hep C, of course, because we were all using the same needle. And the second speaker was Nellie Bly. In fact, one of the members of the Paranormal A team,

Wasn't granted parole, wasn't allowed to go out, so we had to fill in with a bloke who we called Nellie Bly. Not because he was gay, we called him Nellie Bly because he used to tell fibs all the time. He used to tell lies, and Nellie Bly's rhyming slang for liar. Yeah.

And the third one was Joe Sage, who was a drug importer from California, and he'd imported a whole lot of Buddha sticks. So how did you even get there in the first place? Did you go in a van?

Yeah, it was the first time it had ever happened that Paramo fielded two teams at the Athenaeum level. And both the teams got through to the final. And so we all loaded into the van. We got all our civvies out of the receiving office.

So what were you wearing, do you remember? I was wearing the clothes that's in that photograph, which was a pair of bell bottoms, platform shoes and a wide lapel jacket. And a tie. And a tie, yeah, I don't know how to do ties, so someone would have tied that tie up for me.

All right, so you're all dressed up in the van and then you had, how many guards did you have with you? I think we had a screw for each man. So it's not like maximum now. Maximum security in those days was a lot more relaxed than it is now.

Was this the first time? No, you'd been out before because you'd already been to... Yeah, the B grade team went out the year before. It was the first time the B grade was allowed out. That was in 1976. Second speaker in the B team that year. And the debate was at the Queen's Arcade?

Yeah, against toast mistresses. The mooch was that marriage is outdated. Oh, that marriage is outmoded. Yeah, marriage is outdated. And you won. For you, that was your first time out of prison. Yeah, that was pretty exciting. Yeah. You see, in perinormal maximum security, you're surrounded...

All day, you never get outside except into the exercise yard which has big high 20 foot walls around it. It's just a big tub, big concrete tub and you would never see any trees or smell the grass or anything like that. So it was pretty exciting to get out and see the outside world for the first time.

And then you were up against, you had an audience presumably, and you were up against three women, the toast mistresses. Yeah, yeah. Geoff Greenbank, who was the former headmaster of King's College, he was our debating tutor, and he put a lot of time into it, because he was retired, and he put a lot of time into coaching us and listening to our arguments, and we loved Geoff, he was a terrific guy.

We used to throw everything. One of the reasons for the success of the teams is firstly that a lot of the guys in jail are extroverts.

Are they? Yeah, a lot of them are extroverts and this whole thing that people have low self-esteem is bullshit. Most criminals have really high self-esteem. They have excessive self-esteem. They think they're bloody Superman and untouchable and that's why they get caught and go to jail.

It's overconfident. And did that make them good debaters? It made them good debaters, yeah. And they're used to telling lies as well, standing up in court and telling lies. And a lot of the time in a debate, you have to bluff a bit, you know. And Perimeter produced some very good debaters. And that was one reason. The other reason was...

We had lots and lots of free time. You know, the other teams, Toastmasters and the Athenaeum team, they had to work. I mean, they were lawyers and accountants and educated people, but they had to work during the day. We didn't.

We devoted all our time to developing our arguments and practising our delivery and critiquing one another. So we had a real advantage over the others and also all the preliminary and the knockout competitions.

they were held at paranormal prison in the visiting room. You see, so you had a... Visitors were allowed in. They came in. They were allowed in to listen and support their own members. But the visiting room was full of criminals, you know. And it was such a big deal in the jail. The debating team was a really big deal. And getting into the team was a big deal as well. And so whenever there was a moot on, a debate on,

The talk would be all around the jail, an intense amount of interest, and half the jail would turn up to the debate, and they were very partisan, you know, and they would be laughing and laughing at our jokes and hooting and booing at the opposing team. Is that right? Some of them just tried to overplay their hand, like telling a great joke,

Yeah, we went to Jeff's house. Oh, Jeff. You know, he was so proud. And I was one of his favourites, I have to say. You know, he even bought me in a bar of soap. He sneaked it, like it was illegal, you know. And then we went to Jeff's place for this big feed. And he had some excellent wine. And of course, we weren't supposed to drink. And so we all drank some wine, but we were careful not to drink too much. We didn't want to be pissed at the final.

And the screws, of course, were a bit nervous and we'd told them on the way out, look, nothing's going to happen. Give you my word, nothing's going to happen. No one's going to try and escape. And then the screws had a glass of wine each and they relaxed a bit and, you know, it was all good.