I Asked For A Dictionary In Prison. It Changed The Course Of My Life.

“Boss? Boss… can I get a dictionary instead?” I shouted, sat on the floor in the corner of my pad in the ‘hole’ (a cell in solitary confinement).

Having just fucked off, on my command, after offering me a bible, the benevolent screw returned: “Y’takin the piss?”

“No,” I replied.

Several hours later, the food hatch opens and a dictionary comes skidding unceremoniously across the floor.

Solitary’s a grim place, in case you had any misconceptions. All unfinished surfaces. They take your mattress and bedding from you at 6am and return them at 8pm so you can’t sleep all day – and the only official place to sit was on this metal plank welded into the wall.

That would have been alright were it not for the other one perfectly aligned with it that acted as a table, meaning your only option was sitting with a perfectly straight spine for 10 hours. Orthopedically, it’s genius. Practically, it’s malevolent.

Pacing the circumference of my new temporary home, dictionary in hand, eyes pinched, trying to decipher what the fuck it all meant, having as much fun as dunking my nards in molten tar, I had little clue (that’s a lie, I had no clue) that I was building a framework that would one day lead me to writing and acting professionally.

March 2024 marked 20 years and one month since my release from HMP Durham, then a category A prison.

So it felt canny cosmic sitting in the stylishly decorated offices of SISTER, waiting (I’m always the first to arrive. Always.) for the others to join the writers’ room to discuss adapting Andy West’s memoir, A Life Inside.

“I’m here as a nefarious pseudo-consultant to season the incubating story with some sizzling authenticity,” I thought, waiting for the doors to swing open. Which was fine. It wasn’t my first rodeo (I’d consulted on projects before) .

But doing it for TV was a milestone I’d manifested in my grizzled mindscape for a decade plus. I was absolutely buzzing.

I don’t drink more than one coffee a day. Sends me daft. Muddies my thoughts and makes me want to piss every 11 minutes. 

Despite the temptation, I resisted my brain’s lies that a double espresso would make me more cogent in front of my peers (though they weren’t my peers – to me, they were my superiors).

Thankfully, my mendacious mind was interrupted by the entry of Dennis Kelly.

Dennis fucking Kelly.

He tottered in as if he wasn’t Dennis fucking Kelly, which, as I’d learn, was his way. I’d known and followed his work for years. 

He saw me, came around the table, hand outstretched, smiling warmly and said: “Ric, great to meet you. I loved your play.”

Here’s a moment I’ll never forget: “Ahh! Cheers, man! Which one?”

It wasn’t deliberate. It was a reflex, like when a doctor knocks your knee with that faux hammer thing or a Cat A convict pinches your nipple. 

My brain shrieked: “Which one? You cunt! You’ve only written two! Who’d you think you are, Roy fucking Williams!”

Dennis handled my unintentional mouth fart with grace. 

If he’d ridden in on a flying carpet flanked by concubines checking his Patek Philippe, my accidental hubris might not’ve been so accidental as I’m prone to engage with precocious egos.

Thankfully, Dennis Kelly is proper sound, as are the team at SISTER. I felt safe to talk freely, encouraged to talk openly, guided kindly as I chuntered through escapades and off-colour insights.

The day flew by like a coked-up greyhound. Then, at close of play, Dennis, as casually as ordering a cuppa, says: “So, in your episode…”

I didn’t hear another word. My brain turned to static. 

Did Dennis Kelly just say ‘your episode’?

I played it cool, of course, nonchalantly nodding like it was an everyday occurrence. We concluded the day at 5pm.

By 5.01pm I was outside on the phone to my agent. “Georgia,” I blurted, “I’m pretty sure Dennis said ’your episode!’”

She did what great agents (and people) do: calmed me, gently reminded me it was only day one and tenderly encouraged me to focus on the job.

She was right. I shook it off and recalibrated. 

Well, I tried. 

Day 2. 

Sometime back in the writers’ room, deep in discussion, ideas flying, then bang, Dennis repeats: “…in your episode…”

My head was away again, fizzing like an over-shaken can of Stella.

“Georgia!” I exclaimed, with overbearing enthusiasm, blabbing: “He said it again! He said it a-fuckin-gain! On me Mam’s life!”

She humoured me, softly lulling me back from clouds of my own design. 

Day 3. 

Ideas, coffees and croissants (not for me, daytime carbs are like sedatives so I watched enviously as Dennis and Levi polished off pastries and I quietly cursed them for not succumbing to the same slumberous affliction) flowed. It was brilliant. 

I was sad as the final day drew to an end. Or I would have been, if it wasn’t for SISTER’s executive producers Jane and Chris joining us, and the latter saying, aggravatingly cooly: “So Ric, in your episo-”

I was gone, like Baloo The Bear, cutting a boisterous jig out the door, pestering Georgia, again.

Maybe they were just words. Maybe not. But to me, they meant everything. 

Because in that moment – three days, one month, two decades, and a lifetime away from being a 20-year-old nob pacing in segregation, scraping along by the skin of my nuts – I’d transitioned from reading the dictionary to writing for television.

Prison gave no love, comfort, rest or peace. It gave me a sentence.

And I turned a sentence into a story.

Waiting For The Out is available now on BBC iPlayer. Ric wrote episode five and also appears as Wallace throughout the series.