It's criminal! Sarkozy prison diary is 100% pure jambon

For many, Christmas is a time for ham, and arguably the most prime jambon of 2025 has been served up by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president-turned-briefly-prisoner.

- KAT BROWN

Sarkozy, who began a five-year sentence in October for criminal conspiracy, has now published a book about it called The Diary of a Prisoner, which arrives just in time for a dramatic hate reading round the fire in the style of Christmas's most appalling round robin letters.

In any case, Monsieur ultimately spent 20 days in prison before being released on appeal. You serve longer for Dry January. Nevertheless, it is 216 pages long, which works out to just under 11 pages per day. Fair play to the man for knocking out a book in that time, let alone one harrowingly written at a "small plywood table".

"I had never felt a harder mattress, not even during my military service," he writes of the prison bedding. "The pillows were made of a strange material, perhaps plastic, and the blankets were blankets in name only." Thus spake a man who has never stayed at a budget hotel. Also, a man with a word count to fill.

Indeed, from the day he was sent down, Sarkozy has managed his "prison era" in the manner of a superstar who has seen