'Hunger striking' Moors murderer Ian Brady's diet: toast for breakfast and packet soup during the day

Ian Brady makes himself toast for breakfast and regularly cooks soup from packets, a tribunal has heard (Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire)

The Moors murderer Ian Brady, who claims to have been on a 14-year hunger strike, makes himself toast for breakfast and regularly cooks soup from packets, a tribunal heard on Monday.

Brady, 75, is fed through a tube in his nose, but a Mental Health Tribunal at Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside was told that staff see him eating other food “most days”.

He is forcibly fed while at Ashworth. But yesterday’s hearing divulged that nurses bring hot water to his room so that he can make flasks of packet soup.

Mark Sheppard, who has been caring for him for the past 28 months, told the tribunal Brady habitually makes toast when he gets up at 6.30am. The chair of the tribunal panel, Judge Robert Atherton, asked Sheppard whether he thought Brady was trying to “find a way out of his hunger strike”.

He replied: “It’s Ian’s continued stance that he is on hunger strike and is being force-fed. But I think what we see every day is contrary to what most people would think of as a hunger strike.”