Jimmy is so wonderful in this clip. Interviews are filled with checking off what you already know as an  interviewer and what you want the interviewee to tell you on film. You'll see me do that throughout this, and Jimmy comes up time and again with lovely ways of saying things. This interview was about the fourth or fifth time we'd met: I know I sound like a demanding twerp but I was very fond of him and wanted to get all his great stuff onto tape. 

We join where I ask him if they used to get on each other's nerves.

Off go Jimmy, Harry 'Wings' Day and John Dodge for a shower in the main Sachsenhausen camp. Meanwhile, Sydney is  left behind in their special compound. He's annoyed that he's surrounded by threatening skull and crossbones signs on the wire. So, under the noses of their SS guards, he decides to pull a stunt on them...

Just in case you think I'm pushing Sydney to say he had something going on with Heidi, it was agreed that Sydney would always be the one to deal with any women they encountered because of his looks and charm. Which, I suggest, lasted him right to the end.

This is how Jimmy arrived in Sachsenhausen, and what was said to him by the SS and his Great Escape comrade, harry 'Wings' Day.

It's a detail, I know, but I was always mesmerised by the way that Jimmy spoke of the SS as people he knew and met and had had as part of his daily life. I often think of him when I see twits banging on about "the SS" as if they had a clue.

Returned to Sachsenhausen after their failed escape attempt, Jimmy and Sydney were put in the prison inside the prison - the Zellenbau. Here Jimmy met an SS torturer and murderer. I was going to put his picture as the header of the film (in fact it shows the gallows Sydney talks about, photographed by me when I went over for the GE 50th) but then I thought, I can't be giving this Nazi bastard any more notoriety. His epitaph if you can call it that is Jimmy's list of his appalling crimes.

I've always been horrified by the thought of being buried alive. Here I ask Jimmy to describe the experience.

One of the ghastly and humbling things about talking to Sydney and Jimmy was that the story seemed always able to get worse. Here we talk about Sydney's time in Flossenburg concentration camp.

You'll hear me ask lots of questions, some more on the ball than others. I was writing a screenplay at the time about the two escapes and I wanted to get every detail right. The good news of course is that we now have a record on film of the process, something other interviews don't seem to have. Or theirs went on the cutting room floor, a distinct possibility. Excuse the cameraman doing his thing reframing between answers, this is how TV is made, folks.