Doing time with Aitken

There was a time, not long ago, when Jonathan Aitken, former chief secretary to the treasury, would have crossed the road if he had seen Mickey Aguda walking his way. A hardened criminal who robbed vans of cash and freight, Mickey thought nothing of tooling up for a job - even if the cartridges in his gun contained nothing more dangerous than salt.

"I wanted it all - but I wanted it now," Mickey told the Evening Standard. "But you just can't blag anymore, what with CCTV, DNA, informants ..."

All the more amazing, then, that when Aitken was married for the second time on Wednesday, watched by a guest list that read like the Tory Cabinet of 10 years ago, it was Mickey who arranged security, performed the duties of usher and generally ensured all ran according to plan.

Against all odds, the former government minister and the career armed robber have become best of friends, and their story has astonished both the upper echelons of Conservative society and the lower levels of the criminal fraternity.

Because, as Mickey will tell you, when you do bird with someone, you form bonds so strong they are never broken.

On Wednesday, after Aitken married Elizabeth Harris - a former wife of the actor Richard - at St Matthew's Church in Westminster, Mickey could be seen buzzing around the reception in Carlton Terrace, rubbing shoulders with former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lamont, and swapping jokes with Lord Tebbit, Lady Thatcher's trusted hard man.

"It was marvellous," he said. "Lord Tebbit was my hero. And there was Leon Brittan, Michael Howard, Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames, Chris Patten, Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Portillo. The people there were lovely and they all seem to have accepted me as part of the family. Sometimes, I have to pinch myself. Someone up there definitely likes me."

Mickey and "Johnny", as the former robber sometimes calls the former politician, met in Standford Hill open prison on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, while the former was serving four years for money laundering and the latter was famously doing 18 months for committing perjury during his libel action against the Guardian.

"I'll never forget the day I met him," recalled Mickey, 52. "My cell was on the second tier, and one of the screws shouted up, 'You're getting a new neighbour; Jonathan Aitken.'

"Well, I thought he was having a laugh, but then Jonathan came along and he was struggling with his gear. Well, he wasn't a nonce or anything, so I gave him a hand and invited him into my cell for a cup of tea. We hit it off straight away - I wanted to know all about his world, and he wanted to know all about mine.

"It soon became clear that he was a good bloke. He took his time on the chin and became a popular prisoner. He was like the prison's MP. He had a queue of prisoners lining up to get advice from him, and he helped them all."

Mickey said the former minister got a tough time from the "screws", who, he claimed, were selling stories about him to Sunday papers. But Aitken never buckled, even when given toilet-cleaning duties.

"His answer to that was to have the cleanest bogs in the prison," Mickey said. "He just shrugged it off. We laughed our way through our time together. He was like a circus - things just happened around him."

The robber left Standford Hill, bound for Latchmere House resettlement centre in Richmond, in December 1999, three weeks before Aitken was freed. The two kept in touch and when Mickey was released a year later Aitken found him work first in his local church, and then offered him a job as driver and hired help for him and his family.

"I knew I'd get an invite to the wedding, but I thought it would just be the reception in the evening," Mickey said. "Then Jonathan called me and asked me to handle security. Well, I got a couple of my mates - big lumps who could be trusted - and it all went very well.

"There was a lot of champagne, but I stuck to Pimms so I could keep my wits about me. It was a lovely day and Jonathan and Elizabeth enjoyed it enormously. I never imagined I would be in such illustrious company. I'm a lucky man."

Born in Islington to a property developer and a housewife, Mickey said he endured none of the deprivations that lead many to a life of crime. Instead, he insists he was simply greedy.

"I don't know what I would have done without Jonathan," he said. "No one would have given me work. I receive a small wage but it is enough for me and my wife, Lorraine, to live on. And my two boys, Gene, who's just done his A-levels, and Vinnie, who just sat his O-levels, are doing me proud."

Mickey insists that Aitken's much publicised rediscovery of Christianity is genuine. The former minister, who now earns an income from journalism and writing books, is a leading light in Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which takes a keen interest in prison reform.

"I got a call from an old lag the other day who said that last week he called Jonathan asking for £30 to help keep his wife out of prison - she'd just been fined for possession of heroin," said Mickey. "Jonathan told him to come round and asked, why just £30?

"This lag said the fine was £100. He had £10 in his pocket and he had three friends who he could touch for £30 each. Jonathan wouldn't have any of it and just gave him the £100.

"Now I like that, see, because I didn't hear it from Jonathan. He just kept it to himself. Now that's what I call a good bloke."