Suicides - you read of it…but you don’t know the truth, if you were to see it you would go insane! Cut throats, cut wrists, hangings, suffocating, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, more shit. Suicides always shit themselves, did you know that! Life’s final shit, the final act of madness; smell that you rats! Clean me up you pigs, zip me up in the bag you scum and get me out of here… Get me the fuck out of here…get me out!

If evil lingers around you, it will rub off on you, it will cause stress, anxiety and a lot of mental anguish! ‘Eyes’ - you can see evil in the eye of the beholder! Body! Talk! Stance! Walk! Posture! Evil oozes out!

So if all what I’ve said is the definition of insanity then the next thing is how do you define an evil bastard? People can mix evil and insanity up, thinking both to be the one and self same thing…wrong! Let me tell you about evil, first you smell it, secondly you feel it, thirdly you taste it and finally you need to destroy it.

Insanity is a very lonely and empty existence - it’s painfully true. They may laugh and smile, and skip and dance, but behind all the faces there is hollowness like a bottomless pit. The living dead, depression is a terrible illness, so is psychosis, the mentally inflicted beyond cure.

Nowadays I just don’t care; I’ve taken the Frank Zappa stance. I am who I am! Some love me, some loathe me, some respect me and some despise me. But after all that’s been, I still love the insane! As they’re exciting, dangerous and highly explosive! For me mad dogs are gentlemen.

Fuck the rabbit, eat it and go after a lion.

I went through a period where I couldn’t keep off the establishment’s roofs, it was a serious urge I had. To look at a drainpipe and start shaking with excitement, nobody knows the feeling of hitting a prison roof, not unless you’ve done it. Let me tell you, it’s like a lotto win - it’s power. You’re the governor; it’s a kick in the teeth to the system.

So what causes men to become violent? I’ll tell you, boredom, silly rules, muggy screws and pathetic governors. What else can we do - swallow it, wipe our mouths out. You have to fight for your rights. Not sit back and take it.

Violence leads to madness, it fills you with crazy thoughts. You sleep it, eat it and shit it. You become a time bomb. They push you a bit more – you blow up. They beat you and you survive. You get strong and you blow again. So how long can a man live this way? I’ll tell you…until he dies, if need be. It becomes a way of life, but I don’t remember it, why? Simple…it’s painful; it’s empty and alone. Your cell becomes a hole in the earth, it sucks you in. You drown in your own bitterness, it’s not right to live this way.

Prison madness is much the same! Insanity is plentiful in prisons. These days with the drug culture it’s not a lot of difference, as a lot of convicts make themselves psychotic and paranoid. Many end up killers, all over petty and minor problems. Where men would once squabble, fight and kill over a ½ oz of bacca they now do the same over a gram of white powder or a bag of brown!

Urges like the loony who enjoys strangling, it’s his buzz. He gets depressed when in seclusion, as he can’t strangle anybody so in the end he hangs himself in turmoil. Their brain can’t handle it. He wants so bad to kill, but they will not let him, so he has to kill himself.

One lunatic in Rampton used to have bouts of hysteria. Where he would let out a scream, and run at a wall and dive headfirst…crash! He was given a crash helmet! (Well it is a mad house.)

There is no end. There is no cure. It gets worse with time. Cure. How can you cure an institution, we are bricks crumbling in the walls of despair. Death is inevitable for us all. But the insanity is here to stay.

The asylum years taught me a lot about myself. Bear in mind I’m the only lunatic in the United Kingdom who spent time in all three max secure asylums, which you should now know are…Rampton, Broadmoor and Ashworth. Don’t ask me which is the best or the worst, as how do you compare insanity with insanity?

Broadmoor creeps into your blood, the walls touch the sky and the grounds suck you in, they’ve even got their own burial ground. We called it the ‘madman’s hole’, it smelt of fear; a stillness and even the birds seemed to have a stone face like their eyes were made of marble. So many monsters, men of hell, I don’t know how a sane man can keep sane in there.

Asylums are crazy places, with crazy rules. If you’re not mad when you arrive, you are when you leave. (That’s if you ever leave.) I was lucky…I got slung out; they couldn’t afford to keep me any longer.

A loon thought he was Frank Sinatra and every time Frank came on TV or radio the loon would go mad, impostor!

Madness is forever! We even smell different, our hearts don’t beat, they tick, our eyes are different, we don’t just see, we also pick up vibes. We are probably dehumanised and way past our ‘sell by’ date, totally unusable, bitter as lemons.

He got a lovely pair of trainers given off his mum for Christmas, best pair he ever had, but it was the nylon laces that he couldn’t take his eyes off. They found him hanging in his cell!

She sat in a secluded room, she was mad, but she could not accept it; so she was neither sane nor insane. She could not be either until she knew herself, so in limbo she must die. She kept stuffing toilet roll into her mouth. They found her choked to death!

He was a silent type, very nervy of people: shy, introverted, nobody would believe he could scream so loud…well he did drink a bottle of bleach!

I am a creation of the establishment, I realise I’m not as strong as life itself, but I also realise death will suck me in. The eyes and fingers are pointing in my direction. For me, there is only one way – one road, one signpost; it reads, ‘Hell’. It’s a one-way ticket; there are no brakes on my vehicle, there is no way out, only one way in.

Sometimes I stare into a pool of piss, I see my reflection, I picture a hole in my face, there’s nothing there, it’s vanished. I watch the maggots turn to flies, and they fly off with bits of flesh from my body. I attempt to wipe it clear from my mind, but the nice thoughts get swallowed up. I can’t think nice for too long…it would destroy me.

Unlike most I don’t fear prison, never have, never will. Obviously I don’t want it, I hate it, but it’s the hate that drives me on to survive.

Some of the madmen are really fun to be with. I soon learnt to relate to them. I soon became one of them. I ended up the maddest of the mad. There is no madder than myself! Please believe it.

Take outside - freedom. What is it? What does it mean to a madman? I’ll tell you, we go years through a lifetime with no love, no sex, no nice food and no nice clothes. So when it comes…we choke on it! The kindness strangles us; we can’t cope, so we make pigs of ourselves.

Madness is a bowl of poison cherries, chew them and die, but you die screaming in agony.

A doctor once asked me: 'Charlie, what do you think your problem is?' “Doc,' I said, '…you’re the problem!

You get used to the brain being squeezed. At nighttime in the darkness of your emptiness, it seems to swell back up and gives you some peace. In the darkness even the pain is not so bad. A bruise heals. (Time is the treatment.) But it’s your mind that’s tortured. Your thoughts are in turmoil and despair. Feelings of awesome revenge and destruction manifest themselves.

I personally could never come to terms with my label of ‘Criminally Insane’. Just because of my violent outbursts in prison, don’t mean to say I’m mad. Obviously I had become a disruptive element within the penal system. Uncontrollable! Unpredictable! But that don’t make insanity!

Just imagine, you’re on a stretcher in the hospital, being wheeled to the operating theatre, they inject you, put you to sleep…anaesthetic. You drift into blackness, you’re out and you’re the closest yet to death. Then a surgeon cuts into your body, rips you open, goes deep inside. Looks within, pulls a bit out, puts bits in, sews you up. Then! If you’re lucky, you awake! Some don’t wake, this is my point, will you wake? Why should you? How can you? That’s the black hole of madness you’re in! Screaming to get out: ‘Alive’ or just ‘Sane’! You want out of it, you want to see the light!

You can grow up being a troublemaker and then before you know it the next thing you’re doing is listening to Frank Zappa whilst chilling out…now that’s the intelligent way out. What would a psychiatrist say about that?

Just take my advice and stay away from those psychiatrists they’re dangerous. And if you’re 13 years old and sitting in front of one do what I never…chin him ‘cos if you don’t you’ll live to regret it. You talk to your mum and dad (they know you best) and keep your problems in the family.

Is Bronson mad! Let me ask you! How else can I be? I’m probably the maddest guy on two legs if the truth was known, but prison will never beat me, I’d sooner die today than allow it too!

Ever see moors murderer Ian Brady, study his photos, study Black, study Cannon, study Sutcliffe - study them all! Who says evil is not recognisable?

Insanity can be a heavy cross to bear; I mean look at all those people in loony bins compared to those that are free and walking the streets – a tiny percentage are classed as mad. The incidence of mental problems amongst people is said to be rising, so what do they go and do, they cut the amount of asylums by half! Whoever makes these decisions has to be a loon and a half!

There are different categories of madmen, and different types of asylums! I know absolutely nothing about the asylums that house the madman who thinks he is a space man. Would you believe that 90% of madmen are treated in outside clinics?

Ask anybody, would you want an ex-madman living next door? It’s difficult enough being an ex-convict. It’s double hard for us ‘madmen’. Please believe it.

They ask themselves: “What will he do?” “How will he react?” “Will he go mad?” “Will he bite?” “Will he be armed?” They’re pumped up with fear. Adrenaline pumping, fingers tense on the trigger, brains racing. And I’m cool as a cat! The name ‘Charles Bronson’ causes panic! The name ‘Mickey Peterson’ causes stress! The police all love to arrest me, as I’m the most exciting madman they will ever arrest! It’s a fact. So here I am years later, and I’m still the madman. There is no escaping my past.

Looking back at the years I spent in the asylums, I’m now convinced some of that insanity rubbed off onto me!

Mad people are very emotionally orientated! They have complex feelings, they’re easily upset, but are also easy to please! Most mad people have lonely lives, as nobody understands them. So they become “Lost Souls.” They dream a lot. Go within their minds to search - some will turn strange, become dangerous. So a madman is created! His world becomes a mission.

I’ve been an inmate in Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth. I was one of ‘them’. I was once Britain’s most unstable madman! This book is a complete one off! If you’re a nervous type of reader then don’t read it. You’ve been warned! You are now entering the world of insanity; please keep hold of your sanity until the book comes to a stop!