Banged Up: Celebs reveal hardest thing about being in prison (exclusive)

Banged Up’s celebrity line-up have left behind their home comforts and luxuries to spend eight days behind bars at decommissioned Shrewsbury but what was the hardest thing about prison life for the stars?

EastEnders actor Sid Owen and former Strictly 2020 contestant HRVY join Gogglebox’s Marcus Luther, Friday Night Dinner’s Tom Rosenthal and Tory MP Johnny Mercer.

Also Neil Parish, who quit politics after he was caught watching tractor porn in parliament, took part in the reality series as well as The Mail On Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.

The famous faces are under the watch of cameras 24/7, getting their first taste for prison life alongside reformed prisoners who have agreed to take part to help show what life behind bars can be really like.

Stars from the show reveal the hardest thing about being in prison and some of their choices may surprise you...

Sid Owen

Former EastEnders actor Owen revealed the hardest moment for him in prison was being physically locked in a small room.

He told Yahoo: "The most challenging thing is just being behind a cell, they close the door and that’s you until the next day. It’s the boredom factor. Taking anyone’s freedom away."

Doing this reality TV series gave the EastEnders actor a chance to see what it was like for his dad and his brothers who spent time behind bars.

He explained: "It certainly puts you off, gave me a bit of an insight into what it’s like. It was as real as it could be without being beat up or attacked. It was pretty harrowing.

"It was all the noise and it does affect you after a while. It wasn’t the easiest or best experience but it was certainly an experience."

Emotional Owen, who became a dad for the first time at 50, also found it incredibly difficult being away from his little girl Skye whom he shares with his fiancée Victoria Shore.

It made being behind bars for the prison show on Father's Day even harder.

He said: "It was difficult, very difficult. Only because I’m a new dad and it’s tough. I find it difficult putting her to bed. I miss her from when she goes to bed until when she wakes up. I love being a father. I want to spend every minute of the day with my child. So I found that bit difficult."

Tom Rosenthal

Before the prison show experience, Rosenthal thought the worst thing would be the everyday things – including the food and the other inmates.

However, the Friday Night Dinner actor was surprised that those things weren't the most difficult thing about being in prison 24/7.

He told Yahoo: "I thought all the everyday stuff of being in prison, it would be awful. Like the food and all the scary people. That wasn't great. But the thing that actually bothered me the most was that I couldn't leave.

"I couldn't go and do stuff that I would normally do in my normal life. Just being confined to a place for a period of time when it's not in your control that quite powerfully sucked. It wasn't fun. I just didn't really consider how much, not having your freedom to go wherever you want, would bother me."

Rosenthal found losing his freedom and not being able to choose what he wanted to do was the worst part of being of prison life in the reality series.

He said: "It sounds really stupid but just being limited to being in one building and not having the freedom to talk to your friends or see your family or be at events where other people are.

"I didn't really consider how frustrating that is. It is kind of a stupid thing to say but just so used to having freedom. I am so used to being able to, oh, that football game's happening? Oh, I'll go there or there's a gig there. I guess because when you go on holiday for two weeks or you go somewhere and you're just in that place. I thought, oh, I've been to places for a period of time before, that won't be that bad.

"But the fact that someone was basically forcing you there and you didn't have the opportunity to leave that was actually a much more powerfully negative experience than I thought it would be like."

He added: "It's the bit of your life that is taken away from you, that's what sucks the most. There are people that can't even go to their mum's funeral. That's the worst bit."

Marcus Luther

Missing out on big family moments was the hardest thing for the Gogglebox star when he was locked behind bars for the prison experiment show.

When he was filming scenes inside, the dad missed his son's boxing match for the first time ever and it hit him hard.

The TV star said having to tell his son that he wasn't going to be there because he was working was tough.

He told Yahoo: "So for me, I missed out on a lot of things. I missed out on my son, who is part of a successful amateur boxing club and he was boxing. He had his first boxing match for England.

"He got selected to box and watch all the three nations. And so he had his fight and it's the first fight I've ever missed.

"And I've been at all of these fights and me having to say to my boy that 'dad's gonna have to miss your fight because I'm gonna go and do this show'."

HRVY

Former Strictly 2020 contestant HRVY found "many moments of happiness, many moments of relief" while filming the prison series.

However, the YouTuber said he "hated" being in the communal part of the prison where all the inmates could socialise as he found it "chaotic".

The star voiced his fears of being caught up in the middle of an argument by mistake as he watched many rows break out between the inmates.

Instead, he preferred to be locked away where he could talk to people one on one.

He told Yahoo: "I enjoyed being locked in the room. I hated more the outside communal part. It was constantly, it took the littlest thing for someone to explode and it's always the person who is the innocent one that accidentally gets mixed up in it and they're the ones who get hurt. I don't want to be that guy.

"A lot of the other guys are banging in the room but I'm like, lock me in! Get to 7pm and then I can get inside. I can speak to these guys on a level and not have to worry about the chaos of the environment around me."

Banged Up airs on Channel 4 on Tuesday 7 November at 9pm

Read more: Banged Up

• Banged Up line-up: Full list of celebrities in Channel 4 reality show

• Sid Owen breaks down during ‘harrowing’ TV prison show Banged Up (exclusive)

• Strictly’s HRVY reacts to ‘pretty boy rape’ threats in TV prison show (exclusive)

• Banged Up: Shock as MP Johnny Mercer smokes tobacco retrieved from the toilet

Watch Sid Owen talk about becoming a father at 50