In a 2019 conversation about life behind bars, he said: "It's not like one-on-one, let's have a fight. The chances are, without my knowledge, someone would sneak up behind me and cut my throat... stuff like that. You don't see it coming."

On Saturday morning, just after 9 am, that fear became reality when he was ambushed and fatally slashed moments after leaving his cell. Prison officers later described the scene as "beyond anything we've ever seen."

The former frontman had been serving a 29-year sentence for 13 child sex offenses, including the attempted rape of a baby. His 2013 conviction followed a police raid at his Pontypridd home that uncovered a catalogue of abuse and explicit recordings.

The sentencing judge called his crimes "plunging into new depths of depravity." From the day he entered Wakefield, Watkins was a marked man - a sex offender, former celebrity, and, in the eyes of other inmates, the lowest of the low.

"He didn't stand a chance in there," said a former inmate who served time alongside him at the West Yorkshire prison. "Everybody knew what he'd done, and that alone seals your fate in a place like this. He was despised - people used to say it was only a matter of time before someone got to him.

"He was a dead man walking as prisoners banged up for 'normal crimes' see child abusers as sub-human and below them. They earn respect by beating and killing them."