It didn’t quite feel like prison for Lord Conrad Black until he endured his first full-body cavity search.
It was shortly after the dethroned newspaper baron had settled into his bunk room at the federal prison in Coleman, Fla., on March 3 for a 6 1/2-year fraud sentence. Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, 67, and his daughter Alana paid him his first visit.
His fellow inmates gossiped about the pair of brunettes – assuming both were the silver-haired presidential biographer’s daughters until Amiel became increasingly affectionate with her husband.
“It was a laugh on the yard that his wife was still a hottie,” said one prisoner, locked up for drug conspiracy.
After saying his goodbyes, Black, 63, a life member of Britain’s House of Lords, where he holds the title Lord Black of Crossharbour, followed other prisoners into a room filled with guards. He was met by a group of prisoners who were standing completely naked. He was told to do the same and then to squat so he could be searched for contraband.
“Mr. Black had no clue of what was going on, and/or what to do,” an inmate told The Post.
Black was receiving visitors two to three days a week, but those have dwindled to far fewer.
It wasn’t the first time Inmate No. 18330-424 had been caught clueless since he’s been in lockup.
After a Cadillac SUV shuttled him from his $37 million Palm Beach mansion to the big house, about 50 miles northwest of Orlando, Black stepped onto the prison grounds clutching a bedroll and legal papers, inmates told The Post.
One prisoner was aware that the disgraced executive – guilty of siphoning off millions from his company to finance a lavish lifestyle – was arriving that day.
The con approached Black, standing alone on the empty, football field-size yard, led him to his bunk room, which he shares with nine others, and quickly briefed him about the prison.
In his housing unit are a cocaine smuggler, a Hurricane Katrina federal-aid fraudster and a child-pornographer.
Since then, Black has quickly caught on about how to win friends and influence people, not so different from doing business on the outside.
He generally wakes up at 8 a.m. – later than the others and after breakfast has been served. Three days a week, he tutors inmates in English. He also teaches a GED class and a 12-week US history course.
His lectures frequently devolve into a lesson in narcissism as Black spends most of the class spinning yarns about his career accomplishments, according to one inmate-student.
“The class he is teaching is basically his life, and what he has learned . . . life from his point of view,” the inmate explained in a letter to The Post. “He talks of his experiences and how he got to where he is today.”
The Canadian-born Black was once the powerful CEO of Hollinger International, which at one time owned more than 200 newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post.
“The inmates in our class are more interested in how he cut the throats of his competition than the basic fundamentals of business,” the prisoner added.
He teaches until 3 p.m., with a lunch break, and spends the rest of the day at a computer corresponding with his lawyers. He also files a column for the Toronto-based National Post newspaper.
At 4 p.m., he takes a nap.
Dinner is served in the cafeteria at 5, but Black prefers to eat meals purchased in the commissary. A fellow inmate who is a good cook prepares it, and Black eats in his dorm room, an inmate said.
He spends his nights reading and is involved in the prison’s chess league. He attends Roman Catholic Mass every Sunday.
The federal pen is a far cry from the tastes of a man who has written biographical tomes on Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon and who is accustomed to living in a $30 million London apartment, driving a 1957 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith and cruising the high seas in a yacht.
The air-conditioned dorm rooms hold about 10 inmates, according to prison sources. Each inmate gets a locker and a uniform of grayish-green heavy cotton pants, a coarse, olive-green work shirt and a cotton undershirt. However, inmates are allowed to wear street clothes inside.
The ex-media baron generally keeps a low profile, but his stature and wealth has also brought admirers and sycophants.
“Some of the inmates are just trying to figure out how to convince Mr. Black they have the next big project for him to invest in,” one inmate said.
Black’s projected release, if he gets the maximum time off for good behavior, is Oct. 30, 2013.
He has been ordered to pay back $6.1 million he was accused of pocketing from Hollinger.
The only portion of his media empire he has been able to retain, 45 percent ownership of the influential Catholic Herald, is worth only $150,000, Britain’s London Observer reported.
jfanelli@nypost.com