King of the wing

In the professionally bellicose world of pop music, no one was more arrogant or had a bigger mouth than Jonathan King - a man possessing so little modesty that he styled himself The King of Hits. When he was jailed for seven years in November 2001 for sexually abusing young boys, it seemed that he had finally been silenced and that his malign influence was at last snuffed out.

Yesterday, however, there was a sense of dread in the world of showbusiness when the shadow of King stretched once again across the entertainment landscape; the investigation that put him behind bars had continued, and its tentacles had reached out for the television presenter Matthew Kelly and a ring of as yet unnamed celebrities.

For the music industry, in particular, the news was taken very badly. "King's not the only one who took advantage of his position with children," said one industry insider.

"There are a lot more nervous stars and executives out there who had rather too much fun 10 or 20 or 30 years ago when their power to impress - and to seduce - music fans was used and, in some cases, abused."

Kelly, the 52-year-old host of Stars In Their Eyes, was released on bail by detectives investigating several personalities who attended King's Walton Hop disco in Walton-on-Thames in the Seventies. This was where King groomed 14- and 15-year-old boys before inviting them to his home in Bayswater. Here, he would impress them with music and ask them to fill in a questionnaire before bringing the subject round to sex, producing pornographic pictures and sexually assaulting them.

His fate will not have been lost on any of the current batch of suspects if they have behaved in a similar fashion.

King must be going through hell. A sex offender - the most reviled kind of prisoner - serving a long sentence. He must be cowed, desperate, repentant, mustn't he? Well, actually, no. He's having the time of his life.

In spite of the seriousness of his offence, the former music impresario insists he is enjoying life as much as he ever did when he was a multi-millionaire rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bryan Adams and Sir Elton John. Life for this jailbird doesn't involve slopping out with psychopathic murderers.

For King, who used to lure boys into his Rolls-Royce before assaulting them in his home, prison is a chance to meet other sex offenders, enjoy television and radio in his own room, and - in a bending of prison rules that beggars belief - run an internet website where he pontificates, reminisces, indulges in grotesque self-aggrandisement and argues over and over again that he did nothing wrong. He even uses the site to beg for money.

Yesterday, the Prison Service said his website was not being produced in breach of prison rules because King did not actually have a computer in his cell. He, in common with other prisoners, is not allowed access to the internet. Yet he is having it produced outside the prison using a third party, believed in the music industry to be a woman living in New York.

With breathtaking arrogance that could be matched only, perhaps, by Lord Archer, King presents us with an index in which he assumes we will be interested.

There is a diary with a noticeboard, on which readers post comments and questions and to which he sends his replies. The sections continue: Personal, Biography, Music, Literary, Attitudes and Opinions, Your Views, and, with no apparent sense of irony, How to Succeed, and Travel.

"This board is intended to give voice to JK's views of events," his noticeboard announces. "It also airs other points of view, as long as they are not malicious or damaging. But we reflect the support base for those who feel JK has been unfairly treated. If you want to join the rabble, and others who choose to be negative, please post elsewhere. This is a site for honesty and courage, not bigotry and blinkers."

In other words, a site only for people who agree with Jonathan King and not for those who think it is wrong to have sex with children.

In an account of his first year in prison, King wrote: "This has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I've acquired tolerance and patience.

"I've been able to help an extraordinary quantity of illiterate prisoners, thanks to my education, whilst being horrified by how many cannot read or write.

"I've met fine people, noble people, brave people on both sides of the fence - and I like to think I've saved unhappy people from worse misery. I wouldn't have changed what's happened to me for £10 million. In one giant leap, my life has moved from superficiality to significance and I've cherished every second of it."

In a letter to the interviewer Lynn Barber, he compounded impressions of the fun he was having. "Friends say I'm putting a brave face on it - bollocks!" he wrote. "This is far and away the most stimulating, fascinating thing that's happened to me."

What fun he had, he told Ms Barber, when somebody sent in a T-shirt that read: "I'm a celebrity - Get me out of here!"

But in a year when, according to The Howard League for Penal Reform, there was a 29 per cent increase in prison suicides (94 people killed themselves), other offenders are furious with King's rose-tinted view.

They argue that he is having such a nice time only because of the grievous nature of his offences. Because he is a sex offender, King is being kept on the Thanet wing of Maidstone Prison in Kent, a place of incarceration where "VPs" - or vulnerable prisoners - are kept away from the unwelcome attentions of ordinary inmates.

Thanet wing is a concrete block that looks austere on the outside but is relatively cushy on the inside. King has his own room with a toilet and a window that opens. He is entitled to watch television, listen to the radio and edit the prison magazine, The Insider. On his wing, prisoners can even choose the paint that goes on their walls, so long as it is something soothing.

He is woken Monday to Friday at 7.45am (later than most London commuters), has breakfast at 8.10am and works until 11.30am. There is a half-hour rest before lunch and then an hour in the cells before work resumes at 1.30pm. At 4.15pm, the prisoners stop work and dinner is served at 5.15pm, followed by what is known as "association", where inmates may play games or watch television until lock-up at 8pm.

Unlike many prisons, where inmates complain of being confined to their cells for all but one hour a day, the Maidstone prisoners are out 10 hours a day weekdays and eight at weekends. They also have access to a gym and a tennis court, and can select their meals for lunch and dinner in advance.

Life would be a good deal less rosy for King if he had not been segregated as a vulnerable prisoner.

"The other inmates would kill him," says Bobby Cummines, chief executive of the ex-offenders' charity Unlock. "As it is, the sex offenders get together and share their stories. It's disgusting.

"They don't associate at all with other prisoners and they get the easy work, like kitchen or laundry. The worst he will get from the other inmates is verbal insults. So for him to tell the world that prison is easy and he's really enjoying it is sending out the wrong message.

"We are trying to tell kids that prison is hell - that they should stay out of it at all costs, and here he is with his cushy life and his internet. He has money and influence. That's why he's having such a great time.

"Most of the kids that end up in there have neither."

King is insistent, however, that he has no money. During a career that spanned four decades, he claimed to have had more than 20 records in the Top 30 under 20 different aliases - such classics as Una Paloma Blanca and Leap Up And Down and Wave Your Knickers In The Air - which he claimed sold more than 40 million copies.

Yet on his website, under the Please Send Money link, he asks readers to "help fund this site and my life" by buying his CDs or books. He then says the second way "is to send financial contributions. This should be terribly simple and would be much appreciated. Despite stories in the media, not only am I not a multi-millionaire, but, sadly, I'm not even anywhere near a mere millionaire".

Mark Leech, publisher of the Prisons Handbook - a guide to the British penal system - argues that this, at least, should put King on the wrong side of the prison authorities.

"I can't believe they're letting him get away with this," Leech says. "When you're in prison, you can't receive money from outside. Anyway, it smacks of begging to me. Isn't that illegal?"

Leech also disagrees that the Home Office can do nothing about King's website. "Quite simply, if the prison regulations say you can't do something - in this case set up an internet website - then it is in breach of those regulations to incite someone else to do it on your behalf. It is infuriating for King to be giving the impression that prison life is easy. It isn't. For many people - including that 90-odd who took their own lives last year - it can be hell."

King has said he believes he would have been chairman of EMI records if he had not been convicted of buggery and attempted buggery on two boys aged 14 and 15. It seemed a little harsh that he received seven years for two offences that dated back more than 30 years; but that appeared a little fairer when it emerged that 25 other men had come forward and told police of similar experiences with King when they were underage.

In spite of all that, the impresario has shown no remorse and has not put himself forward for sex offenders' treatment because, he says, he plans to appeal his case all the way to the European Court of Justice.

He believes he could still be something in the music industry but it is just this kind of belligerence - refusal to accept guilt - that will keep him out of a job when he is finally released.

"He is in complete denial, and that has upset a lot of people who knew Jonathan," said a senior industry insider. "People trusted him and they feel let down. I know people with kids who gave him the benefit of the doubt and now they feel that they, in turn, could have let their kids down.

"Perhaps to his face, some industry people are saying nice things but, believe me, behind his back people are saying he's history."

Pretty soon, they could be saying it about a whole raft of celebrities.