WINNING over a crowd of convicted criminals was always going to be a “hard cell” for shamed tractor porn MP Neil Parish.
But the former politician reckons that reformed lags he met on prison reality show Banged Up were friendlier than his old Westminster colleagues.
Neil, 67 — a farmer by trade — quit as an MP after being caught twice viewing X-rated material in Parliament last year.
He claimed he first stumbled upon it accidentally while browsing agricultural machines, but called the second time a “moment of madness”.
Now he has found himself in Channel 4’s latest social experiment, where a string of celebrities were “jailed” in a decommissioned nick alongside former offenders to give them a taste of life behind bars.
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And, perhaps surprisingly, Neil revealed the experience has finally helped him fight his demons over the porn scandal.
He said in an exclusive chat: “I haven’t maintained any friendships within Parliament. Once you become smelly or tainted, you are avoided.
“Politics is very superficial. It is a very ambitious place and, once you are out of the way, it is just another office door open.
“I probably admire a lot of the reformed criminals more than my former colleagues — I think they are more loyal.
“I have made genuine friends with the former criminals. Three or four people from the show have come down to stay at the farm.”
The scandal began when two female MPs reported seeing Neil, who had represented Tiverton and Honiton in Devon since 2010, looking at adult content on his phone in the House of Commons.
The whip was suspended — meaning Neil was effectively booted from the party — pending a probe.
But he quickly admitted the allegations and resigned as an MP.
Pals claimed he had been looking up Dominator combine harvesters and may have accessed dominatrix content by mistake.
At the time, Neil said: “The situation was that, funnily enough, it was tractors I was looking at.
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“I did get into another website that had a very similar name and I watched it for a bit, which I shouldn’t have done.
“But my crime — biggest crime — is that on another occasion, I went in a second time.”
Adding that it was a “moment of madness”, he said: “I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. I made a huge, terrible mistake and I’m here to tell the world.”
Neil has now opened up on life after the drama, revealing he retreated to his farm in Somerset before tentatively agreeing to star in Banged Up.
He said: “I was a big fish in a little pond in my part of Parliament and then, in five days, it was all gone.
‘I was bloody stupid’
“You are out, you resign, clear your office and you are an outcast. It takes a bit of adjusting. I went back to farming and my cattle.
“One doesn’t die of shame, but you do have to live with it.
“I did something ridiculous and stupid and you have to make peace with that and move on.
“That was a big motivating factor for doing this show.
“There were scary moments behind bars, but the hardest thing for me was just getting emotional. It made me face up to some of my demons.”
He went on: “Your demons don’t just go away, but you can learn to live with them.
“It really made me realise what a bloody stupid man I was, but also that I need to forgive myself.
"It put it into perspective for me and made me realise that other people have turned their life around with much worse demons than I have.”
Neil has revealed he has been courted by TV execs since standing down.
And he says he snubbed another Channel 4 offering, Scared Of The Dark — in which contestants spend eight days living and completing challenges in total darkness — because he “didn’t see the point” in the show.
However, Banged Up felt like one he could “get his teeth into”.
Neil appears alongside celebrities including ex-EastEnders actor Sid Owen, Goggleboxer Marcus Luther and singer HRVY in the jail series.
Each celeb “prisoner” shared a cell with a reformed criminal and was subjected to strip searches, as well as being required to carry out typical day-to-day tasks monitored by real-life guards.
Neil now believes his tractor porn shame helped him bond with his jail mates — particularly former Hartlepool bouncer Chet Sandhu, who became one of Spain’s biggest-ever drug barons.
He smuggled the largest haul of black market steroids in the country’s history before his arrest at Alicante airport in 1999.
Neil said of his relationship with the show’s reformed crooks: “I think going through what I went through did make me empathise with them more.
"I didn’t look at them as criminals but as real human beings who have feelings.
“Some of them did crimes just out of greed, but others had a terrible upbringing
“I am now genuine friends with former criminals. My cellmate Chet has been down to see me.”
Chet helped Neil examine his own personality and Neil says he now reckons he could be capable of committing a crime.
He added: “I can understand how people get themselves into trouble. I think I am capable of hurting someone in the right circumstances if I had a weapon to hand.
“I do have a temper. Luckily it is verbal and I am not violent, but I have had a lifetime of learning how to control my temper.”
Neil went on: “Thankfully I have a very stable marriage and relationship, which has helped me all these years.
“But I can understand the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong circumstances, how these things happen.”
Neil’s wife Susan stood by him throughout the embarrassment of his Westminster downfall.
At the time, he told how she described him as “oversexed” and added: “I don’t know if I am but I have a healthy appetite.
“She used to say when I was a little too amorous, ‘I’ll get the scissors to you if you don’t behave. Snippety, snip’.
Now, he has given her a little more credit, adding: “If ever there was a hero of the hour, it was her.
“Thankfully we have a great relationship which survived it all.”
Banged Up was filmed at HMP Shrewsbury in Shropshire — which was a men’s category B/C jail until its closure in 2013.
Neil admitted: “I spoke to the show psychologist via Zoom before going in there and we could chat to him throughout the experience if we needed.
“It did leave me very, very emotional. I came out a nervous wreck.
“The psychologist did say we would become schizophrenic if we weren’t careful.
“After I came out I would react to people, not violently, but very abruptly.
"Your senses are all over the place. You absorb it all and it does have a significant effect on you.
"He helped me put things into perspective, but I also relied on my friends and my wife.”
Appearing on Banged Up has boosted Neil’s desire to return to politics, though he would have to stand as an independent.
He said: “We like to think of things as black and white and how we are above people in prison.
“But the truth is, there are a lot of grey areas.
“As a society we lock the prisoners up, throw away the key and forget about them, and I don’t think that is the solution.
“Putting young offenders into prison is the worst thing you can do because you are putting them in a training academy with the best criminals, who have all the criminal networks.
‘I believe I can do good’
“You have a lot of prisoners who go in for very small crimes then get forced into situations inside which end up increasing their sentence. Having been inside I can understand how that happens.
“You can go in for a year and stay in for ten. That’s what’s crazy.
“In the end, I think we are creating more criminals in a way.”
Throughout his 12-year parliamentary career, Neil largely toed the line and voted with the Tory whip on matters of police, crime, sentencing and courts
Data shows he generally opposed spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed.
Neil said: “I do want to stop more young people getting into trouble and I am planning on working with people from the show, like Chet, to see how we can come together to make a difference.
“I still have my political brain and I still believe I can do some good. I am certainly giving a political comeback some serious consideration. It would have to be as an independent.”
For now, Neil hopes Banged Up hitting screens will help him pursue a path back to his old job.
He added of the experience: “It made me re-evaluate my life and see what positive effects I can have moving forward.
“Hopefully it made me a less selfish person.”
- Banged Up continues tomorrow at 9.15pm on Channel 4.
