IT was the first time the wispy Scottish accent had been heard in public since his trial for which he was found guilty of the Moors murders almost 50 years ago.

Ian Brady spoke in a low, almost husky voice, eroded by years of heavy smoking, his words barely audible to a Manchester court house where his 19 words were relayed via video link from maximum security Ashworth Hospital on Merseyside yesterday.

He spoke after the judge in the mental health tribunal had launched into some complex jargon about how it would not be looking at the original offence – namely the killings of Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, who were all aged between 10 and 17, with his accomplice and partner Myra Hindley.

Brady, who was born in Gorbals, Glasgow, and who has been on hunger strike since 1999 and is force fed through a tube, cut through his words. "I've raised the question of precedents at all the hearings," said Brady. "You probably don't recall the dialogue we had before."

Judge Robert Atherton cut him off fairly briskly, so we never found out what precedents he meant. One of the journalists present at the hearing said the hospital authorities had muted Brady's microphone, presumably because they knew he would be inclined to interrupt.

The last time Brady's voice was heard in public was back at his trial in 1966, when he was asked if he wanted to say anything. He made no attempt to deny the three murders he was convicted of, made no apology for subjecting the jury and victim Lesley Ann Downey's family to the sound of Lesley Ann being tortured.

Brady, who wants to be transferred to a Scots prison, and partner Myra Hindley, who died in 2002, were responsible for the murders of five youngsters in the 1960s on Saddleworth Moor.

During the hearing, consultant psychiatrist Dr Adrian Grounds described Brady's speech as fluent and coherent. "He talks at length," said the doctor, a tad drily.

I have been corresponding with Ian Brady for eight years now, so I think I have a good sense of his personality, but there is a difference between knowing he is an intensely angry man with dark sexual tastes and a passion for politics and seeing what kind of person he is in the flesh.

Or virtually in the flesh. The hearing was taking place at Ashworth outside Liverpool, while the press were in the advocates' room in Manchester's Civil Justice Centre, 40 miles away. A notice on the door asked the Dear Advocates to use somewhere else for the duration of the hearing. Although the judge said we should treat it as if we were in the same room, it was clear the hearing would not have been able to proceed properly if Brady had been in a room full of journalists.

There were only occasional glimpses of him, usually from the side, but each time the camera rested on him, people craned forward to look at him, to try to decode from his appearance what kind of man could do the things he did.

For me it was an extraordinary moment. The long correspondence, the years of pondering what he had done and trying to make sense of it for my novel, Myra, Beyond Saddleworth, were now crystallised into this image on a screen.

The first sight of him was a shock. The most recent pictures of him, taken a few years ago admittedly, showed a gaunt, scraggy man with cropped hair and rough skin, his eyes as staring as a jakey on Olde England sherry.

Today, Brady looked at least 15 years younger than his 75 years, his skin smooth and healthily coloured and his silvery hair luxuriant and wavy. With his wire-rimmed dark glasses and a dark jacket, he could have been a singer on the television programme, Nashville. When he was a young man he was a dandy, his hair up in a Teddy Boy quiff, his suits made by a bespoke tailor.

Perhaps it was because his face was impassive, you could not tell what he was thinking, although on a couple of occasions one of his legal team leaned over to quieten him. It was a curious thought, that one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century was being treated almost like a school pupil.

His voice was way too low for anything to be heard and he kept his head bent, giving nothing away, even when the Ashworth QC, Eleanor Grey, was calling him paranoid and schizophrenic or Dr Grounds was saying he had a narcissistic personality disorder that made him superior and contemptuous of those around him. Not a flicker crossed his face.

The only incongruous note was what looked like a yellow Zapata moustache. Only after we had had the chance to study him for minutes at a time did it become apparent this was not a bizarre outbreak of facial hair, but the feeding tube he wears constantly. I had always supposed it to be a simple matter to insert one, but apparently it is a tricky business putting in a hospital drip, and Brady doubtless wears his all the time.

If anything speaks of the tenacity of his mind it is his ability to stand the tube, the bilious yellow liquid constantly in his system, as it has been since 1999.

There was a surreal atmosphere round the whole affair, with Ashworth's QC bludgeoning Dr Grounds and him insisting it was quite within the bounds of normal behaviour to laugh out loud or swear at the television.

The hearing continues.