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'That,' said Warren, 'is a barometer of frustration.'Īlso in the door was the original 'Judas Hole', so-called by the prisoners because it allowed the guards to betray them. Then the manager pointed to a battered metal plate covering the whole door, where a previous 'guest', presumably staying for longer than the weekend, had vented his rage. Thomas-Ferrand explained the awful stench that would fill the landing in the mornings when the doors were opened for slopping out. A slipper bath sits under a small half-moon window, with the remnants of the now hacked-away bars sticking out. Following the curves of the ceiling, you see where steel joists now mark the former parameters of the tiny single cells where up to three men would sleep. Warren took us into a room and explained how Malmaison has knocked three cells into one to create each space. All that was missing was the clicking heels of Mr Mackay.

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At each end, vast windows flooded the atrium with light and dotted along the landings, like sunken tombstones, were the tiny red cell doors, all originals. Walkways hugged the stone walls, linked to the other floors by iron staircases. We walked out of the lift onto the landing of A Wing. On the wall was the floorplan: the House of Correction (the former punishment block, where a suite with a shower room big enough for a rugby team now suggests anything but punishment) the Governor's House (a wing of huge bare-brickwork duplex suites, some with Mal's signature bathtubs in the living room) and the Exercise Yard (the gym, obviously).

I was met by John Thomas-Ferrand, 57, the former governor of Oxford Prison, who was visiting for the first time since leaving in 1990, and Michael Warren, the hotel's general manager.

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To one side, in a dark-panelled lounge area, lit through a mullioned window, a flat-screen TV was showing episodes of Porridge, suggesting that, if there is just a hint of camp and kitsch going on here, Malmaison is firmly in on the joke. In the dimly lit reception area, vaulted ceilings, limestone floors and Gothic arches continue the theatrical theme. From the outside, Mal Oxford is the classic Cinderella's castle of a Victorian jail: all crenellations, cruciform arrow slits and turrets.

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