Former LOSTPROPHETS frontman Ian Watkins reportedly receives "hundreds of pages" of letters from women. The 42-year-old singer, who is on trial at Leeds Crown Court for possessing a mobile phone in his cell at HMP Wakefield in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England between March 4, 2018 and March 10, 2018, receives "a lot of mail" from mostly female correspondents, according to prison governor Tom Wheatley. Watkins's barrister Gareth Burrows told jurors: "It is clear that there are a number of females who continue to contact him in prison properly through the Prison Service through letters, through e-mails and visits." When asked by Burrows whether Watkins gets "hundreds and hundreds of pages of letters", Wheatley said: "That would sound reasonable." According to BBC News, Watkins agreed with prosecutor Stephen Wood that some of the letters included sexual fantasies about him but denied this was why he kept them. "I have always been a hoarder," Watkins told the jury. Watkins allegedly used the phone to contact a woman he previously had a relationship with and later hid the phone inside his anus while serving time at the British maximum security prison. Watkins was removed from his cell after officers received intelligence he was illegally storing a phone. The singer told jurors that he hid the phone in prison because he was threatened by two fellow inmates, but he refused to name the men who allegedly ordered him to look after the device. Watkins said his fellow inmates at HMP Wakefield were "murderers and handy," adding, "You would not want to mess with them." He said he had found prison life "challenging" and revealed he was on medication for acute anxiety and situational depression. Under questioning from his barrister, Watkins described how the LOSTPROPHETS had been successful, selling five to 10 million albums and playing large venues around the world. When the prosecutor asked him, "Do you miss the adoration, do you miss the fans?", Watkins replied: "We never did it for that. I miss music."
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