Aitken: 'Sin of pride' to blame for my downfall

The disgraced former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken told a student audience yesterday that he favoured piety over pornography during his time in prison.

Mr Aitken, who served seven months for perjury and perverting the course of justice, said a fellow inmate had offered him reading material from his hardcore pornography collection. But the former Tory chief secretary to the Treasury said he told the prisoner: "I used to like them, I am now following a different path, a path of having faith, a path of following the teachings of Jesus."

Mr Aitken, 59, who is studying Theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, spoke of his prison experiences while delivering the annual Chaplaincy Lecture at Oxford Brookes University. He admitted that he had felt "utterly helpless and utterly vulnerable" at night when he was being threatened by cellmates. He said he tried to calm his nerves by quietly reciting the psalms.

Mr Aitken, who was jailed in 1999 after the collapse of his libel action against The Guardian and Granada Television, told his audience: "I suffered badly in terms of committing the sin of pride.

"It's very easy to allow pride to disrupt all your values and judgements. Pride gets in the way of the Christian journey from a self-centred life to a God-centred life."