EXPENSES cheat Denis MacShane has bemoaned the lack of wholemeal bread in Britain’s prisons — and fondly recalls being slipped postage stamps by a notorious gangster.

In his candid Prison Diaries, published in hardback later this month and serialised in the Mail on Sunday yesterday, the ex-Labour MP reveals he was repeatedly confused with actor Ian McShane.

He concluded prison governors “had it in for me” when he was banged up in high security Belmarsh and Brixton jails as opposed to an open prison.

At Belmarsh, he was placed in a single cell after fears were expressed that Muslim inmates would resent him for criticising Islam.

Denied a half-chicken on Christmas Day, Mr MacShane blamed screws for favouritism. “Instead it was two thin slices of industrial turkey,” he complains.

But he describes the chit-chat among prisoners as “richer, denser and more full of warmth than we constipated, self-regarding, self-important, self-ignorant English-educated men are usually capable of.”