Media coverage of A Bit of a Stretch Podcast

1st October 2020

4 Star review in The Times

The film-maker Chris Atkins’ podcast A Bit of a Stretch is about the two years he spent in prison. As a nice middle-class man he is not the sort of person who is usually imprisoned. Many of the people listening to his podcast will be nice middle-class people and the show allows for a frisson of horrified sympathy. “Good grief,” you think. “What if that were me?”

Most of the former prisoners Atkins interviews are nice and middle-class too. Most of them (like Atkins) were put away for white-collar crimes such as fraud. One interviewee says that he knew he had spotted a future friend when he noticed a guard slipping a copy of the Financial Times under the door of a neighbouring cell. Another plummy ex-con spends his time writing short stories. Less highbrow is the man who cheerfully describes breaking another prisoner’s leg in the canteen after he tried to steal his chicken drumstick.

Write up on Curtis Brown News

Chris Atkins' compelling and insightful podcast, A Bit of a Stretch, has won the Podcast: Episodic Excellence at this year's CrimeCon UK True Crime Awards. 

The podcast, which sees documentary filmmaker Chris Atkins interviewing 20 ex-convicts about their time in prison, leads the listener on a journey through their often brutal, uplifting and heart-breaking stories to expose the biggest prison crisis in UK history. Inspired by his own conviction for tax fraud in 2016 Chris seeks to lay bare the hideously dysfunctional prison system.