Calendar featuring UK's prisons becomes unlikely hit for 2009!

London, Dec 16 (ANI): Calendars are synonymous with scantily clad women, naked jam makers or landmarks of a country, but now, a schedule featuring the drab walls of Britain's prisons has emerged as a surprise best-seller.

Named 'Her Majesty's Prisons of England 2009', the bizarre calendar adorns the wall of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

And the calendar features the less-than-glamorous forms of Strangeways, Wormwood Scrubs, Dartmoor and Pentonville, among the 12 institutions turned into unlikely pin-ups.

The calendar comes in line with the surprise success of the Boring Postcard books with its prints of motorway service stations, roundabouts and shopping centres.And it was Kevin Beresford, a 56-year-old printer and courier from Worcestershire who came up with the strange idea.

Beresford's fascination with the less aesthetically pleasing features of Britain triggered a series of books and calendars on such subjects as roundabouts and car parks.

"Every year you see the same calendars on the shelves, such as Jordan and Cliff Richard, so I decided to come up with something totally unique," The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

He added: "I'm a courier and everywhere I turn there seems to be a prison so I went up and down the country taking pictures and turned them into a calendar. It started off as a bit of a joke but the orders have been pouring in. I gave one to Jacqui Smith, who is MP in my hometown of Redditch, and she thought it was hilarious."

The month of January ion the calendar features Wormwood Scrubs while the Victorian form of HMP Leicester, the all-male Nottingham prison, Long Lartin in Evesham and HMP Gloucester also make part of the 12 page edition.

"The calendar shows prisons from all over England from Hull to Dartmoor. It seems to appeal to all sorts of people although I've not had any orders from prisons yet," said Beresford. (ANI)