HAVING interviewed Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips I can tell you now, he isn't a fuddy-duddy, he DOES have a giant brain (sitting next to him, I have never felt so thick in my life) and he IS a decent guy.

So decent, in fact, that I suspect he simply can't comprehend the feelings of most ordinary people towards the idea of life meaning life for the worst prisoners.

Lord Phillips believes that the idea of prisons clogged up with "geriatric lifers" is a bad thing.

To many of us, however, the idea that scum like Andrew Randall of Kettering, who was jailed for the rest of his natural for raping and murdering his seven-month-old baby, will rot inside prison isn't troubling.

It gives us a nice, warm feeling and a sense that for some victims at least, justice is truly being done.

And it's the same warm feeling we get when we read about how nasty life in prison is (or was) for the Rose Wests and Myra Hindleys of this world.

However, if Labour peer Baroness Corston has her way, all of Britain's women's prisons will be closed down and the very worst offenders would be sent to "homely" local custody units.

Why don't they go the whole hog and issue them with Laura Ashley curtains and new DFS sofas on which to park their murderous backsides?

Because, in these units, it's proposed that people like Rose and Myra would be able to live as a "family unit" with other inmates, organising their own cooking and shopping. Presumably at M&S and Monsoon, if they fancied it.

If it weren't so serious it would be hilarious. Only a New Labour Baroness would fail to appreciate just why women like this are in prison.

They're there because they either slaughtered members of their own family, like evil Rose, or, like Myra, they helped destroy other people's families through their pitiless behaviour.

Family units are the last place they should be.

I don't believe that women who have suffered years of abuse and then snapped, or committed minor, non-violent crimes should be locked up the same as a man who's a rapist or a killer.

However, I can't see anything wrong with prison, even a short sentence, for women who see nothing wrong with habitually robbing, stealing and cheating because these crimes bring misery too.

The idea that because they have kids women shouldn't face custody is a nonsense.

Men have children too, but this isn't a consideration when sentencing them. And is the victim of a female murderer any less dead than the victim of a male one?

The sad and unpalatable truth is this - that some women and some men are such appalling parents that taking them to prison, away from their children, is not a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs.

It's the children's only hope of salvation.

  • THOSE Liz Hurley Indian wedding pictures.

Liz looks like a Quality Street factory has exploded all over her.

Arun looks as though a meringue has been welded on to his head.

And little Damien looks like, well... like his little namesake from The Omen, at the point when he's about to unleash the horrors of Hell on everyone.

And, done up like a kipper in that kit, who can blame him?

  • ROCKY star Sylvester Stallone has been charged in Australia with possessing a banned drug containing human growth hormone.

The drug is sometimes used, it's alleged, by men keen to banish the signs of ageing.

Judging by the most recent pictures taken of him, I'd say he hasn't taken any at all.