Sandra Gregory

Gregory had spent two years travelling around Thailand and living in Bangkok, sometimes working as an English language teacher. Suffering a bout of dengue fever, Gregory was unable to work; her money was running out and she was desperate to return to the UK. She met and became friends with Robert Lock from her home country. She claims that soon after they met, he made her a proposal, "Come to Tokyo with me and if you hide my drugs on your person, I will give you £1000." Gregory agreed to carry Lock's 89 grams of heroin, for his personal use, from Bangkok to Tokyo. This was subsequently reduced to life imprisonment, then downgraded further to 25 years the same day. ==Transfer to Britain==

After spending four years in Lard Yao, Gregory was transferred at her choice to Britain in 1997 to complete the remainder of her sentence (21 years). She found she was imprisoned in maximum security prisons there: in the UK prisoners were classified by the length of their sentence She wrote a book about her experiences, titled Forget You Had a Daughter. It was released as a hardback in 2002 by Vision. The paperback edition was published in 2004 by Vision Paperbacks. ==After release==

A few weeks after being released from prison, Gregory applied to Oxford University. She started studying geography as a mature student at Harris Manchester College in 2002. Prior to attending Oxford, she took a year out to tour schools and talk about her experiences in the hopes of dissuading others from making the same mistakes she did. She said in 2001, "I thought my CV looks blotchy, I've got a criminal record and I'm not part of mainstream society so I'll not get a place. But I did and I found that the college I had applied to takes people on their individual merits. They accept a diversity of students who have something to offer." Gregory said in 2004 that the scenes in the novel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and its film adaptation involving the Thai prison probably received inspiration from her incident since author Helen Fielding knew the next door neighbours of her parents and presumably would have talked to them. Gregory appeared in the 2006 British documentary series Banged Up Abroad where she talked about the experience. ==See also==