After being offered hardcore pornography, disgraced former cabinet minister, Jonathan Aitken, formed a prayer group with murderers, a safe cracker and armed robbers which helped clean-up his prison.

Speaking at St Paul's church in Howell Hill, Ewell, on Friday, Aitken, who spent seven months of an 18 month sentence for perjury in Belmarsh Prison, said he found Christian faith when his world fell apart and he went through 'defeat, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail.'

He said an Irish burglar Paddy offered him hardcore porn magazines in the jail but he declined saying he was on a 'different path' following Jesus.

He said: "After a long pause Paddy broke it by saying something completely unexpected, he said 'I would really like to try that path myself'."

The pair started praying together and formed a pray group including a safe cracker, armed robber, drug dealer, murderers, lifers and other 'assorted villains'.

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He said he noticed people started changing, stopped swearing, threw away porn magazines, started being civil to prison officers and gave up drugs.

He said of the about 20 prayer group members, a couple had died and three were back in prison but 12 to 15 of them had gone straight.

He said: "Something happened, whether it was a journey, a change or a transformation."

During an interval at the meeting he told the Epsom Guardian that pride and anger prompted his infamous announcement that he would fight falsehood with the 'sword of truth'.

Aitken made the statement before taking libel action, which later collapsed and resulted in him being found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice in 1999.

He said: "Of course I very much regret it.

"I have learned a big lesson there. Every so often I have to watch on television replays of what is called the 'sword of truth' speech.

"I always say to myself, a: 'who is that berk up there?'. And b: 'why is he being so pompous and not telling the truth, at least in one area'."

Aitken went on to sue the Guardian newspaper and Granada TV for reports on his dealings with leading Saudis.

Asked what propelled him to commit perjury, he said: "It was a combination of anger, fear and pride. Anger came because some of the things the Guardian said were untrue."

Aitken said he was not an arms dealer or pimp and there was no corruption but added that the truth is not an 'a la carte menu' and in any case he lied about the Ritz bill.

In 1997 a lawyer produced evidence to counter Aitken's claim that his wife paid for a hotel stay at the Ritz in Paris and the libel case collapsed.

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He said: "Nevertheless at the time I was angry. Then of course what I really should have done is content myself with a dignified denial and I don't think it really would have amounted to anything other than a nine day wonder.

"But pride made me fight, fight too hard. Fear was really sort of fear of being found out, fear of losing and that old rhyme: 'Oh what a tragic web we weave, when first we practise to deceive'."

"I got into what seemed to be quite a minor cover-up and it became a major catastrophe." He added: "But I'm a very happy person now. Life is good."

Aitken came to St Paul's Howell Hill to talk about his life, which he said has been changed by a strong Christian faith kindled on an Alpha course in Kensington prior to his imprisonment.

Aitken, who is on a mission to improve the rehabilitation of prisoners, also met with Epsom and Ewell MP Chris Grayling on Thursday.

Aitken said: "I admire very much he is doing as secretary of state for justice. He's one of the best ministers this Government has produced, really delivering."

For the past two years Aitken has been writing a book about Margaret Thatcher, who he first met at church as a young MP while going out with her daughter. It will be released in October.

On Friday he told the church about being sentenced to 18 months imprisonment at the Old Bailey in 1999 then arriving at the reception cell, known as the cage, in Belmarsh prison He said: "As we stood around the cage I will never forget the scene, a bit like the wild west."

"There were people sobbing, there were people angry and I remember one young man was so furious he kept charging into the bars of the cage so fiercely that his head spit open and blood poured all over the place."

He said prisoners had mugshots and fingerprints taken and underwent strip searches, prison clothes fittings a psychiatric check up.

The prison psychiatrist, who was oblivious to media scrums and news reports, asked 'does anyone other than your next of kin know you're here'.

He said: "I gave the prison psychiatrist a wry smile and I said as a matter of fact I guess perhaps 15m or 20m people." Aitken said: "He said to me in a soft kind voice: 'May I ask if you have ever in your life suffered from delusions?"

That night the prisoners, who had tuned into the media, began a expletive-ridden chant about how they would show what they thought of Tory cabinet ministers.

He said: "In a mood of terror I remember that I felt I couldn't doing anything, threats getting worse and worse it sounded like.

"And I did the only thing I thought might help me in those dire circumstances, which was that I knelt down on the concrete flagstone floor of that prison cell and said a prayer."

An Alpha course starts on Wednesday, September 25, at 7.30pm at St Paul's Howell Hill, 15 Northey Avenue, SM2 7HS.