Crime and Punishment (by Prisoner FF8282)

In his own eyes, Archer is a celebrity, temporarily marooned at the wrong party

The literature of the prison cell has a long and distinguished pedigree. John Bunyan wrote the first draft of The Pilgrim's Progress while serving nine years in Bedford jail for preaching without a licence. The Marquis de Sade's rather less uplifting works were almost all composed with his legs in irons. Jean Genet's cell-bound rhapsodies to masturbation and decay, The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers were much admired by Sartre and Cocteau. Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy and the dissident poet Breyten Breytenbach's dispatches from his South African gulag are testimonies of human resilience in the face of injustice, violence, ennui and despair. So Jeffrey Archer has much to live up to with the publication of A Prison Diary.

The book's publication – and the fact that Archer identifies other prisoners by name in its pages – has caused an immediate uproar. Eyebrows are also being raised at the revelation that he smuggled the pencilled pages of his manuscript out of the prison inside replies to letters from well-wishers. For this is a stratagem that's both enterprising and heroic, the act of a brave man anxious to bring the terrible truth of a repressive system to the attention of the free world...

Unfortunately, the material that Archer has striven to put before us doesn't live up to the classics of Nick Lit. The extracts published yesterday in The News of the World show us an unrepentant, unregenerate Archer, mildly disconcerted by the squalor he finds in prison but wholly unequipped to articulate any profound response. Of Jeffrey Archer the contrite public figure there is no sign. But there's plenty of the Ham Actor, the Posh Grandee and the Wronged Victim.

The book's author is "FF8282", Archer's prison number at Belmarsh, a self-conscious nod to TE Lawrence's publication of The Mint (about his horrible time in the RAF) under the name of "352087 A/C Ross" – both men, you see, once-great world figures now reduced to mere numbers by the machination of Fate. Early entries show Archer undergoing the indignity of strip-searches and the impertinent probings of prison doctors. But instead of being mortified by the stripping of his dignity and his symbolic eminence, he notes only that at least the screws could identify a decent designer label when they saw one: " 'Aquascutum, Hilditch & Key, and Yves St Laurent', says the officer as another writes it down."

Archer promises the warders that he has no plans to be tattooed, and assures the doctor that he does not drink, or smoke, or take drugs or harbour suicidal thoughts. Four days later, he has second thoughts: "They've supplied me with a Bic razor and I consider cutting my throat. But the thought of failure is just too awful to contemplate." The self-destructive impulse visits and departs with such blinding speed that we're tempted to disbelieve him – and something about the detail makes you wonder if he considered cutting his throat simply because he was offered a cheap razor, rather than a Gillette G2 Electra Glide...

When Archer queues for his first prison supper, we anticipate a scene of high drama, low-life banter and the discovery that nick food is no worse than dinner at Marlborough or Charterhouse. But sadly, "The boiled potatoes and diced carrots swimming in a well of grey water did not look appetising. I made some feeble excuse about having eaten earlier, and returned to my cell." His lordship's distaste is predictable (Jeffrey, prison food isn't supposed to look appetising; it's not supposed to arrive with a garnish of arugula artfully drizzled with balsamic vinegar), but his refusal to eat anything at all comes across as a petulant cop-out.

Instead of confronting the new underworld where his soul will begin its moral re-education, Archer simply won't play. He bides his time waiting to be transferred to one of the cushier prison wings – known as "the Ritz", "the Hilton", "Bed and Breakfast" and "Hell" – while leaving us in no doubt that he's the only inmate who is entirely familiar with the real boudoirs of the first two. Even his calls to his wife invariably end with the words "Get me out of here." Because he is not, in his own eyes, a man who has done anything wrong. He is a celebrity, temporarily marooned at the wrong party.

Archer's capacity to irritate people is, in other words, well to the fore in his diary. Perhaps the most creepy revelation is that he brought with him some publishing release forms, which friends or former associates of an author are sometimes required to sign, waiving their right to any legal redress or financial gain should their names or exploits feature in a future bestseller.

"He started saying good morning to everyone, so we all knew he was up to something," said one of the inmates. "Next thing we know, he's trying to get a whole load of us to sign these forms."

The picture of a slew of hardened criminals nervously backing away from the figure of Jeffrey Archer as he approaches, smiling with hand outstretched, encouraging them to sign away their rights and become fictional manipulations in his next book, is piquant indeed.