HIS LIFE BEHIND BARS

He’’s grown a beard, started smoking and craves forgiveness – a new doccie offers insights into Oscar’s prison world

- JANA VAN DER MERWE

THERE was a time when his face was all over the news: Oscar Pistorius the inspirational Paralympic champion whose fighting spirit took him from one triumph to the next. The world watched in awe.

Then it was Oscar the murder-accused, fighting tooth and nail to stay out of jail for the 2013 Valentine’s Day fatal shooting of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

But since the prison gates slammed shut behind him in 2016, things have been rather quiet on the Oscar front. There’ve been occasional snippets of news but nothing substantial, which has left people wondering: what have fur years of prison done to Oscar?

This is exactly what Bill Schroder, Oscar’s former headmaster at Pretoria Boys High, was thinking as he drove to visit the athletic star at Atteridgeville Correctional Centre.

Like many South Africans, he remembered Oscar as the clean-cut golden boy so he was taken aback when he saw him for the first time.

“He has grown a beard, which I don’t think does him any justice,” Bill reveals in a new documentary.

“He is smoking. I didn’t mention it but I could smell it on him when we hugged.”

As the Blade Runner, as he used to be known, prepares to spend his 34th birthday behind bars later this month, a new four-part series, The Life and Trials of Oscar Pistorius, made by sports channel ESPN is getting people talking about him all over again.

Bill, who is one of the scores of people interviewed for the doccie, admits he was surprised when out of the blue he got a call from the prison.