"Ever been mentally ill?": Brady is cross-examined

Ian Brady's tribunal resumed after lunch, and began with Eleanor Grey QC - counsel for Ashworth Hospital. She began her cross-examination of Brady by asking him about his memories of his time at Durham Prison which she described as a "little partial".

"Can you remember being frightened of other prisoners in Durham?"

Brady said: "During the first two years they tried to clamp down on Cat A'ers and they were all Cat A'ers - the Krays, Train Robbers, McVicar...

"What they had us doing, mail bags in a cell. They thought they would get away with this with people serving 30 years and natural life."

Miss Grey interrupted and asked if he was scared of other prisoners and quoted the prison record for Durham from December 19 1967.

It read: "Brady is acutely aware of the hostility of other prisoners towards him. They constantly shout things and bang his door and he's afraid of being attacked. I noticed every time footsteps outside his door, he was apprehensive. He's refused to take exercise. I think he's scared of violence on the way to the yard and sick of abuse hurled at him."

Brady was asked directly if he was scared of other prisoners.

"Naturally, taking precautions," he replied.

"Who was?" Miss Grey asked.

"Er, too complex to explain," Brady said.

"I had Train Robber Buster Edwards next to me.

"We were all top-security Cat As - the Krays, Train Robbers.

"We had conditions out of this world. Ronnie Kray was cooking for his landing, I was cooking for mine... we were sick of eating steak."

Miss Grey asked: "It's as if you are reminiscing about the good old days?"

"I mentioned three riots, 'the good old days'," Brady replied.

Miss Grey asked Brady if he accepted that he was ill at the time he was transferred to Ashworth in 1985 when he was said to have shown psychotic symptoms of hallucinations and delusions.

"Have you heard of Stanislavsky?" replied Brady.

"If you knew who Stanislavksy is... have you heard of method acting? Does that make it clear to you?"

Miss Grey asked: "Anyone knew?"

Brady said: "Naturally not... not formally."

She later asked: "Do you accept you have ever been mentally ill?"

"No," he said.

Miss Grey then took Brady on to the subject of him complaining of physical ailments at Ashworth and then refusing to see medics when they came to his door.

He said he could not remember one incident she cited in which he mentioned that he had pain in his arm.

Brady said: "I have a photographic memory and I don't remember this particular incident you are referring to."

He said when staff came to his room he regarded it as "a job creation scheme".

"People with nothing else to do, asking to do irrelevant blood samples," he said.

He said it was "commonplace" for staff to work "in gangs to back up their own story" when complaints were recorded that he had been abusive to them.

"That is always the the story," he said. "If you are outnumbered three to one, two to one, the staff are always right, the prisoner is always wrong."