A KEY figure in the Strangeways riots who said conditions in prison then were "degrading" — claims little has changed in the intervening 25 years.

Reformed ex-con Alan Lord, who now runs a gym in Radcliffe, was jailed for 15 years for murder after a botched robbery, and hit the headlines after becoming a negotiator with authorities from the roof of the prison.

Mr Lord now warns people using his gym against offending, saying prison will "never be a bed of roses".

He said the riots were inevitable, with warning signs clear to the prison authorities as much as 20 years before the Strangeways riots.

The 53-year-old was speaking after Lord Woolf, who published a report into prison conditions following the riots, said conditions in prisons are now as bad as they were in 1990.

Mr Lord said prisoners in 1990 could shower and change clothes just once a week, and received just six half-hour visits a year.

He described the "slopping out" policy — whereby several prisoners shared a bucket, presented each morning, as a toilet as Victorian cells did not have them — as "degrading".

He said some prisoners were so embarrassed they took to throwing their waste out of windows instead.

On April 1, 1990, inmate Paul Taylor grabbed a microphone during a prison service to signal a sit-down protest against conditions, sparking 25 days of unrest.

Mr Lord, of Stand Lane, said: "They already had prior warning that the prison system was in dire need of changing, some going back 10, 20 years.

"It was too antiquated and as a result of the discontent building it came to a head in 1990 and exploded."

He said the inmates involved suffered either increased sentences or the disruption of being moved round the country.

The riots, which claimed two lives, began to calm down once Mr Lord, once photographed naked on the prison roof, was captured.

He said things had improved by his release in 2012, but that the recession had made an impact, taking things "back full circle".

Cells had toilets, he said, but are still inhabited by two or three prisoners.

He added: "In running the gym, I deter people from committing any form of crime.

"I tell people what prison is, which is not a bed of roses and it never will be."

Lord Woolf has called for a new investigation into prisons, saying they are "heading for crisis" again.

Prisons Minister Andrew Selous said: "This Government has considerably increased the adult male prison capacity from the level inherited at the end of the last parliament.

"All prisons have safe population levels and published statistics show that crowding is at its lowest levels since 2007/08."

Mr Lord's partner Anita Armstrong has written a book about his experience behind bars: “Life in Strangeways: From Riots to Redemption, My Thirty-Two Years Behind Bars.”

Mr Lord was aged just 18 in 1981 when he was part of a gang which robbed a jewellers in Manchester. In the scuffle which ensued, he used a knife and the jeweller died.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 15 years, but a host of incidents and escape bids, including one from an Astley Bridge police cell in 1990, saw him incarcerated for 32 years.

Mr Lord, with the help of the probation service, secured a £9,000 loan to open Al's Gym, in Church Street East.