He plays chess. He reads. And he tells everyone he?s innocent

When Harold Shipman awakes to his usual precise, self-sufficient prison routines shortly before 7am today, he will have been deprived of one of the key justifications that he has used to maintain the fantasy of his own innocence.

In conversations with fellow inmates and officials in the medical wing at the top security institution HMP Frankland, Co Durham, where he is serving a life sentence, Shipman has been citing the existence of an independent inquiry as evidence he would be cleared.

"He bores the shit out of people telling them he's innocent and that the inquiry's not finished yet," one former Frankland prisoner said.

"The guys in there are all doing serious time and, once convicted, most of them will stop that talk. He keeps going on," he said.

Reg McKay, a former social work director and journalist, who is in contact with six Frankland inmates and ghost-wrote the biography of the Scottish gangster Paul Ferris, corroborates the story.

"This absolute conviction of innocence and talk about the inquiry is not endearing him to the prison staff," he said. "Buckling down and accepting it is an unwritten rule."

But the inquiry did not crop up in conversation between Shipman and West Yorkshire Police officers when they met last year during the force's investigation, on behalf of Dame Janet Smith, of a possible 19 murders in Todmorden.

As usual Shipman refused requests to meet officers, but Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg, who was heading the investigation, persuaded Frankland's governor to order Shipman's release into the force's custody.

The officer then had Shipman driven to his old Calder Valley territory, in the hope of provoking a reaction. It is believed Det Supt Gregg had photographs of the alleged Todmorden victims and their houses and streets placed before Shipman in an interview room at Halifax police station.

He turned his chair away from his interviewers, a sergeant and inspector, and when they walked around the table to place them before him, he lowered his face and screwed his eyes tight shut.

There is certainly a greater sense of control for Shipman in Frankland's medical wing, where he is confined for his own safety. Many prisoners hate the wing. In the words of one fellow inmate, who spent three months there until December last year and who wished only to be known as Steve, it is a "mad house, full of the unhinged".

There is no prison uniform at Frankland, which permits casual clothes and sweaters as standard wear. It is a "humanistic" establishment, according to Mr McKay. Shipman is known to read The Guardian with his breakfast and, after using the communal shower, will happily take up the leisure pursuits on offer.

Table tennis and pool are at his disposal in the "common area" of the modern one-level wing. Steve also claims to have played chess on a regular basis with Shipman and, though no great player, to have beaten him just as regularly.

The relaxed environment does not stretch to televisions in rooms, a prison luxury which has to be earned over some years. Shipman must watch what others prisoners want to see in the common area.

But he still has a cherished opportunity to provide unofficial medical advice. While at Strangeways prison in Manchester awaiting trial, he established an ad hoc medical clinic. At Frankland, he dishes out advice when fellow prisoners queue near his cell to see medically trained prison staff, who may prescribe them basic pharmacy items.

Shipman's cell is on the other side of a partition and within shouting distance, according to Steve. "Inmates would shout out to him what their problem was and he would tell them what to ask for. He'd also take people aside and tell them the prescription wasn't right."

Shipman, whose sole permitted visit each week tends to be taken up by his wife Primrose, has not enjoyed good health himself. He has been taken to Sunderland on at least one occasion for treatment to a detached retina. This may have given him more enthusiasm for one of his voluntary prison jobs: translating the Harry Potter books into Braille.

His delusions of innocence will continue, Dame Janet Smith predicted yesterday. "I don't think we will see any remorse," she said. "This is the most complete account of his criminality that I believe will ever be possible."