Prisoner Charles Bronson can't seem to stop singing Tom Jones songs since losing his bid for freedom at his much-publicised public parole hearing last month. Speaking on the phone to his long-time friend and former gangster-turned-author Dave Courtney, the 70-year-old inmate could be heard bursting into an "emotional" rendition of The Green Green Grass of Home.
A number one hit for Pontypridd singing legend Jones in 1966, the old country music standard tells of a prisoner on death row awaiting his inevitable fate. In a phone call to Courtney earlier this week Bronson dedicated his rendition to Rhyl-born Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK.
Executed in 1955 for murdering her lover, her case would play a major part in the movement to abolish the death penalty here in Britain. "She was a beautiful girl and they snapped her neck," said Bronson, whose mum Eira is from Aberystwyth.
