THE visiting room in Mountjoy prison is long and cylindrical, like a toothpaste tube with the cap firmly on. It's not as imposing or forbidding as you'd expect, though. For sure, it's a grey old spot and they haven't broken the bank on the decor, but no matter.

There are small kids hugging their fathers here this Friday afternoon and life-worn mothers hugging sons in their 20s, and because of all that, it's the happiest place in the prison. At least it will be until 4.30pm, when visiting time ends.

Christy McGrath stands waiting in jeans and a jumper and jacket and for a second he's hard to recognise. He's 29 but he looks older, and if you had to pick the former jockey out of the room, he'd do well to make it into your top three.

A champion handball player as a kid, he was always one of those people who were good at whatever sport they turned their hand to but you look at him now and you see a man who's been over and back to the Mater hospital across the street three times since arriving back in Ireland six weeks ago. He had to have a pacemaker installed in 2003 and his health is, if not a worry, then a constant diversion.

He's in good form today, though, and he extends his hand and thanks you for coming. Since he has given up one of two weekly visits from his family to allow the Sunday Tribune in to see him, you tell him the gratitude should be flowing in the other direction.

The conversation is a bit stilted at first because of the long wooden desk that splits the room down the centre, the inmates on one side and the visitors on the other.

Everybody stands throughout. Comfort is not a high priority.

He's much happier since he got moved here, he says.

The six years he served in England were horrible at near enough every turn.

Pleaded guilty For the uninitiated, he was sentenced to life in prison in January 2001 for the murder of Gary Walton in Coundon, north-east England, with the recommendation that he serve at least 14 years. He has never denied getting into a fight with Walton and hitting him twice in the head with a brick but the cause of death was strangulation, something McGrath knew nothing about until after he had entered a guilty plea at his trial on the advice of his legal team. Because he pleaded guilty, the myriad anomalies in the case never got an airing in court and any appeal will depend on new evidence being unearthed by Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer best known for her work with the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.

She took on his case around two years into his time in prison. He was away from home, an Irishman in an English jail, with all that entailed. It always marked him out and gave people something to hang on him.

One day in Gartree prison in Leicestershire, he had to settle a canteen bill of �19.16. The prison officer thought this was the funniest moment in the history of comedy. "Nineteensixteen, eh?" he laughed.

McGrath paid his bill stonyfaced. "I'd say you know a lot about it, " he said before turning on his heel. He could have laughed along but it wasn't that kind of place and it hadn't that kind of atmosphere.

Things are better here. For a start, he's Christy McGrath again instead of Prisoner FL5070. He wears his own clothes that have been washed in Carrick-on-Suir by his mother and brought up to him. He could wash them himself in the prison but it would defeat the purpose. Some nights, just the smell of his old house and the feel of fabric-softened clothes is enough to lift his mood.

It's still Mountjoy, though.

It's still walls and bars and the prospect of more walls and more bars for the guts of the next decade. Sometimes he finds himself forgetting things, like the sound automatic doors make when you walk into a shop or the sound of a car engine starting up. He tries to tune his head to the right noises but can't find the wavelength.

One day, it got so bad he had to ring home and ask his father how to get from their house in Carrick-on-Suir to Ballyneale. It's a journey of a couple of miles, one he'd made a thousand times as a youngster. But in his head, in his cell, he couldn't for the life of him remember how it went.

For all that, the people he talks to in Mountjoy don't think he's a murderer, and that makes a massive difference to him.

"I've actually been made pretty welcome here, " he says. "I get on well with the governor and the guards are nice to me as well. Because they all know I shouldn't be here. Anybody's who's read about my case knows the whole thing is a mess."

Six years and counting is a hell of a mess. He's made plenty of his time inside, however. Since going away, he's become a qualified gym instructor and has won awards in community sports leadership for volleyball, weight-lifting and rugby. He won certificates for catering, food hygiene and cleaning and not only won awards for poetry but had some of his verses published. Keeping busy has been his way of avoiding becoming resigned to his fate.

A day in court "I've never accepted the sentence. I know it doesn't look great for me but there's always a bit of hope, you know? If we can just get one person to come forward and say they saw something that night or that they know what happened, it would be enough for an appeal. There'll be a parole hearing sometime this year but I haven't a hope in it, I wouldn't say. But a day in court is all I'm after for now.

"Look, I know I assaulted the man. I have always accepted that and I've always said that whatever punishment I get for assaulting him, I deserve. And when I was told he had died, I assumed it was from what I had done.

But somebody strangled him to death and I never knew that until it was read out in court. And there was no forensics to say that I did it.

They've never even been able to pinpoint a time of death.

"This all deserves to be heard in a courtroom and that's all I'm after. I've never asked anybody to believe me.

All I've ever wanted is for people to sit in a courtroom and listen to the facts of the case and of the investigation.

If they sit there and listen to everything and then can walk away knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that I murdered Gary Walton, I'll be amazed. Beyond a reasonable doubt? There's just no way."

The prison guard places a slip of paper between us to let us know our time is up. He walks down along the room, placing slips between two other groups as well. For the first time since we started talking, you can hear a baby cry.