This World: The Real Bangkok Hilton (BBC2) : MICHAEL Connell knows to his cost the dangers of drug smuggling. The 20-year-old Manchester lad was caught at the airport entering Thailand with 3,000 E tablets in his bag.

As he sat in the customs office waiting to discover his fate, he was alarmed to spot a notice on the wall stating that the sentence for importing drugs was the death penalty.

In court, because he pleaded guilty, he got a lighter sentence - 99 years. He has no idea how long that means he'll remained locked up inside Thailand's Bangkwang Penitentiary, better known as the most notorious prison in the world. The Thais call it "the big tiger" because it eats men alive.

After two years of negotiations, cameras were allowed inside for the first time. Some areas remained off limits, while fears remained that the presence of a foreign film team could trigger off unrest that guards, outnumbered 15 to 1, would be unable to control.

The 7,000 inmates are packed into a prison built for half that number. They include murderers and rapists, but most have been locked up on drug offences. Many will die in prison of old age - if Aids, tuberculosis or any of the other diseases rife there don't get them first.

Some will be executed by lethal injection. Those facing the death penalty used to be machine gunned to death. Blood splatters are still visible on the wall of the execution chamber.

The documentary was an effective deterrent for anyone contemplating drug smuggling in Thailand, where the government operates a zero tolerance drugs policy. Even a first offence can mean life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Some might consider the latter better than sharing a cell with 24 people where the toilet is a bucket, you can't lie flat on your back without touching another prisoner and you're locked up 15 hours a day because of a shortage of guards.

Safety fears led to a guard being given the camera to film the daily routine of long-term prisoner Andrew Hawke, imprisoned for smuggling heroin. The film makers remarked on "a surprising level of freedom inside his cell block", but he took the opportunity to complain about arrangements for foreigners to finish serving their sentence in their homeland. The British government makes them serve half their sentence, while others are released more quickly. Americans went free after two or three months, he claimed, and other Europeans served no more than ten years.

Until he returns to the UK - a big if - he can only console himself with the admission by Director-General of Prisons, Natthee Jitsawans, that the place needs modernising and more staff. Already, television sets have been installed in cells and a prison TV station, BKP Cable TV, has started broadcasting. It's hardly compensation for Hawke's knowledge that, sentenced to 50 years, he's going to die behind bars.

Published: 23/07/2004