Porridge 9781911239956, 9781844573349, 9781911239345, 9781911239352

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Porridge

BFI TV Classics BFI TV Classics is a series of books celebrating key individual television programmes and series. Television scholars, critics and novelists provide critical readings underpinned with careful research, alongside a personal response to the programme and a case for its ‘classic’ status.

For a full list of titles in the series, please visit https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ series/bfi-tv-classics/

Porridge Ri c ha rd We i g ht

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 by Bloomsbury on behalf of the British Film Institute 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN www.bfi.org.uk The BFI is the lead organisation for film in the UK and the distributor of Lottery funds for film. Our mission is to ensure that film is central to our cultural life, in particular by supporting and nurturing the next generation of filmmakers and audiences. We serve a public role which covers the cultural, creative and economic aspects of film in the UK. Copyright © Richard Weight, 2020 Richard Weight has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image: Roger Bamber / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-9112-3995-6 PB: 978-1-8445-7334-9 ePDF: 978-1-9112-3935-2 eBook: 978-1-9112-3936-9 Series: BFI TV Classics Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For my grandmother, Hilda Weight, who never received her just rewards for being honest and hardworking. This book is also dedicated to the men and women working in prison and probation services who, despite small budgets and public indifference, do their best to turn criminals into citizens.

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C o n t e n ts Acknowledgements ��������������������������������������������������������������������

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Introduction �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 1  ‘New Faces, Old Hands’: The making of Porridge ���������������������� 9 2  ‘Rough Justice’: Class and power in Porridge���������������������������� 29 3  ‘Men Without Women’: Sex and family in Porridge�������������������� 61 4  ‘Ways and Means’: Sexuality, race and nation in Porridge���������� 79 5  On the Rocks: Porridge goes to America���������������������������������� 101 6  ‘You can’t buck the system’: Screening Porridge���������������������� 113 7  Going Straight: Freedom and restraint after Porridge���������������� 123 8  ‘I ain’t coming back’: The legacy of Porridge��������������������������� 143 Notes���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 156 Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 166 Credits�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 168 Index����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 179

Ac k n o w ledgements

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I thank Rebecca Barden for commissioning this book and steering it to publication with the help of Sophie Contento. The support of my friends in Britain and beyond is always important and I’m especially grateful to Chris Everett and Chris Gomersall. In the academic world, special thanks go to Professor Peter Hennessy and Professor Martin Daunton for continuing to inspire my work. Specific thanks go to the historian Stephen Bourne for watching some Porridge with me and testing my ideas with his considerable knowledge of British film and television. As always, Surrey County Cricket Club and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club gave me hours of happy distraction when I needed to escape the prison of work. And finally, I thank the Governor of Wormwood Scrubs for welcoming me into London’s legendary jail. The vivid memories of my day inside the Scrubs – as a visitor, talking to prisoners and staff – haunted me productively throughout the writing of a book about the comedy of incarceration. Richard Weight

Acknowledgements

Unless otherwise identified, images are from: Porridge © BBC 1974–1977 Porridge © Black Lion Films 1979 Going Straight © BBC 1978 On The Rocks © ABC 1975

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Introduction ‘Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court and it is now my duty to pass sentence.’ Those words, spoken by a judge to the show’s hero in the title sequence of every Porridge episode, are among the most famous in British comedy and they remind viewers that this is an odd sort of entertainment. The first situation comedy anywhere in the world to be set in a prison, Porridge is about men being punished for crimes committed against the same sort of people who are watching the show. Millions of hard working Britons were fans, many of them anxious about rising crime and worried that burglars would steal the TV set they were watching it on. Yet they still settled down at 8.30 pm on Friday nights between 1974 and 1977 to watch a 30-minute story unfold that celebrates the sometimes pathetic, often ingenious, recidivism of a group of social misfits who by their own admission are failed citizens. How did such a comedy come to be seen as part of a ‘golden age of British sitcom’, without ever losing its edge to nostalgia? Crime, like sex, sells. But Porridge did not romanticize villainy. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it’s a satire of class consciousness and power, warmed by a humanistic celebration of men on the margins of society. Its heroes are weak inadequate misfits, not tough, glamorous gangsters. Porridge was a success

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because the essence of situation comedy is confinement; characters in this format are people who feel trapped and thwarted by circumstances beyond their control. This, therefore, is the ultimate sitcom. Porridge was set in Slade Prison, a fictional jail in Cumberland in the rural north of England near the Scottish border. The three television series had a total of sixty-three characters with speaking parts over the course of its three-year run. But most of the comedy revolves around the tension between a quartet of characters and their different backgrounds, personalities and values: the inmates Fletcher and Godber on one side, and the prison officers Mackay and Barrowclough on the other. Fletcher is a career criminal with little remorse for the life he has chosen. Coming from a long line of thieves he is a child of the midtwentieth century: a Blitz baby who grew up in Muswell Hill, North London, during the Second World War amid the rubble created by German bombers. He left school without qualifications and spent his teenage years in the 1950s as a Teddy Boy and petty thief.

Prison mug shot of Fletcher.

Introduction

After a spell in borstal for robbing a sub-Post Office he was conscripted into the army, doing his National Service in Malaya at a time when the British were fighting to cling on to the remnants of their empire. Working well away from the front line at the army stores in Kuala Lumpur (with ample opportunity for thieving), Fletcher’s National Service neither saved the empire nor disciplined the errant Londoner. He returned to a life of crime after being demobbed, and we meet him at the age of forty-two as he is about to begin his latest spell in prison, for attempting to steal a lorry. Fletcher’s attitude towards the penal system is summed up in the advice he gives to his young cellmate, Godber, in the first episode: Listen – the important thing is to remember who you once was. And to keep a bit of that person intact up here (he taps his temple). Don’t get bitter or militant, or try to screw the system, ‘cos it’ll only screw you. Just keep your nose clean, bide your time and do your porridge.1

Throughout the series, Fletcher reiterates this pragmatic advice to the men in his orbit. Whether they’re dealing with prison officers trying to discipline and punish them, or other prisoners out to rob and attack them, Fletcher believes that the best way to survive is not open rebellion but keeping your head down and winning what little victories you can. A generation older than Fletcher, 55-year-old Mackay is an archetypal representation of authority and discipline. A miner’s son from the industrial central belt of Scotland, he was a drill sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders before becoming a prison officer (he too served in Malaya but as a dedicated volunteer not a reluctant conscript). Mackay is a self-consciously upper-working-class man: a semi-educated, hard-working professional who strives to improve himself and sets equally high standards for others. Their comedic war of attrition is tempered by Fletcher’s cellmate, Leonard Arthur Godber. ‘Lennie’ is a sensitive 23-year-old working-class

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Mackay keeps a grip on Fletcher and Godber in the exercise yard of Slade Prison. 4

man from Birmingham who doesn’t know his father and was raised by a poor but devoted single mother. He’s serving his first prison sentence (two years for burglary) and is frightened. At first, Fletcher resents having to share his cell but then chooses to mentor Godber so that the two men become a surrogate father and son to each other. ‘We wanted a newcomer to prison,’ said Ian La Frenais, ‘a guy who could act as our audience in many ways, allowing Fletcher to become a sort of mentor. You can only do that by telling someone who’s scared and never been inside before. If both Fletch and Godber were old lags they wouldn’t have had those conversations, but with Fletch explaining everything to a newcomer we were able to deliver all these facts in a digestible way.’2 Having been raised in the Midlands, Godber’s geographic roots sit half way between the Scotland of Mackay and the London

Introduction

of Fletcher; his character also sits between the two main protagonists. On the one hand, he resents incarceration and is a willing partner in Fletcher’s attempts to outwit authority. But Godber is also aspirational and doesn’t want to be a career criminal. So he studies to pass exams, an aspiration that’s dismissed by Fletcher and encouraged by Mackay. The Scotsman therefore competes with Fletcher to mentor the young man – an altruistic impulse that makes Mackay a more rounded character and the relationship between jailer and jailed more realistic. Barrowclough is as much of a comic foil to Mackay as Godber is to Fletcher. A Yorkshireman who has a liberal view of the penal system, he believes in the innate goodness of the prisoners. After twenty-three years’ service he still hopes that they’ll respond to his kindlier, more trusting approach. The reality is that they all take advantage of him, to the constant dismay of Mackay – epitomized by his catchphrase ‘Pull yourself together, Mr Barrowclough!’

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Barrowclough asks Fletcher to behave outside his cell.

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‘They were a great contrast,’ said Dick Clement, ‘one was a total bastard who you had to watch out for at every moment, the other a pushover. You could play one against the other, and it seemed logical to have two characters like that.’3 According to the actor Brian Wilde, his character represented ‘a new wave of officers coming through who were interested in rehabilitating prisoners’, rubbing up against ‘the old hard-bitten warders who felt prisoners were inside to be punished’. This tension gave Clement and La Frenais the chance to make controversial points about the relationship between crime and society, as well as discussing the need for penal reform – subjects that rarely made the news, still less became popular entertainment.4 The show won critical acclaim and huge audiences from start to finish, with an average of 15.6 million viewers per episode. Porridge flows into a stream of original British situation comedy that began with Hancock’s Half Hour (1956–61). It remains unique in that no comedy set in a prison has been produced since, yet its legacy is far-reaching. The Monty Python team jealously admired it. By showing what was possible within the conventional sitcom format it fostered more innovative sitcoms such as Peep Show in later decades, as well as inspiring postPython sketch shows like Little Britain. The co-creator of Little Britain, David Walliams, once said of Porridge ‘it still feels completely modern: the writing, the acting and the situation just hasn’t dated’.5 Porridge has become almost synonymous with prison life in Britain. Testimony from both prisoners and staff show that it’s regarded as a more authentic portrait of the penal system than some of the grittiest crime drama. In the 1970s and 80s it was used to discipline prisoners in jails, with officers forbidding them to watch it as a punishment for bad behaviour. Contemporary prison memoirs say that Porridge can still offer practical guidance to surviving your first spell inside. Porridge pokes fun at snobbery and deference; it shows how institutionalized prejudice can thwart the most ambitious people; and it shows how Britain’s toxic level of class consciousness continues to

Introduction

land the country with the lowest rate of social mobility in the developed world. Yet this sitcom is not confined to the British obsession with class. Thanks to Clement and La Frenais’s deliberately progressive scripting, the show also dealt with race and sexuality in a way that challenged stereotypes and placed it in the vanguard of slowly changing attitudes to minorities. Two members of Fletcher’s cohort – Lukewarm and McLaren – were some of the first gay and black characters in British comedy whose role was not to be the obliging butt of homophobic and racist humour. Women are largely absent from Porridge, but they are central to the prisoners’ emotional lives and their absence is felt so painfully that they underpin the show’s authentic depiction of prison life. Since the invention of situation comedy in 1950s America, the format has been dominated by depictions of family life. Porridge was part of a reformation of situation comedy on both sides of the Atlantic that began in the late 1960s and which reflected looser family ties in a more sexually permissive and socially ambitious era. Like real gangs all over the world Fletcher’s band of deviant brothers form an alternative family unit. Led by their criminal father figure, they support, protect and console each other – not in order to commit more crime but to survive the harsh consequences of being caught. Through its emotional depth and political range, Porridge spoke to millions of law-abiding citizens while making them laugh out loud. It even suggested a few strategies for living in a society where how you speak, where you went to school and what colour you are, can still determine much of your life. Over the next eight chapters, I will explore all of these issues, showing why Porridge came to be so loved and so lucrative. Let’s start with how it came to be made.

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Clement and La Frenais with Ronnie Barker, from Radio Times, 29 August 1974.

1  ‘New Faces, Old Hands’: The making of Porridge The writers of Porridge met in London in the spring of 1964 just as Britain’s capital was emerging as the hub of Western modernity. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were both twenty-six, had much in common and soon hit it off. Born in Essex in 1937, Clement was privately educated and entered the BBC as a studio manager for the World Service before training to be a TV director. La Frenais was born on Tyneside, also privately educated and worked as a market researcher in London. They wanted to write comedy that reflected modern Britain and were inspired by contemporary ‘New Wave’ cinema, so it’s in that context Porridge should be seen. ‘We both loved these New Wave movies that were coming out like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,’ said La Frenais, ‘they were all our generation; we were so excited about seeing this kind of working class movie.’ His partner added ‘there was a whole new part of Britain that was getting attention for the first time, so we wanted to jump on that bandwagon but use it with comedy as opposed to drama’.1

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They wrote sketches, including early editions of Not Only … But Also (BBC2, 1964–70) starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore which, along with Monty Python, became a template for the satirical sketch show in Britain. They also wrote the screenplay for the film Hannibal Brooks (1969) starring Oliver Reed, which was shown on the BBC a few days before Porridge launched in order to maximize Clement and La Frenais’s exposure.2 One of the first comedy sketches of theirs to be filmed was called ‘Double Date’, and on the strength of that they were commissioned to write The Likely Lads (1964–6), followed by the even more popular Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? (1973–4). As Phil Wickham has shown in his essential study of this sitcom, it was about a couple of male friends wrestling with changing attitudes to class and gender as well as coping with the anxieties of ageing and marriage. The BBC wanted to capitalize on Clement and La Frenais’s success by moving them on to fresh projects. Porridge was the result. Porridge was piloted on Comedy Playhouse, the BBC’s launch pad for new work between 1961 and 1975. Originally designed as a vehicle for Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, it was opened out to other writers such as Johnny Speight, Marty Feldman, Roy Clarke and David Croft. Comedy Playhouse was one of the most influential strands ever produced on Western television, running for 15 seasons and 120 episodes and spawning a total of 27 comedy series – including Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son as well as other successes like Till Death Us Do Part, Are You Being Served?, The Liver Birds and Last Of The Summer Wine. It was a fitting genesis because Clement and La Frenais were inspired by Galton and Simpson’s work. ‘All that depth with just two men in a room – brilliant!’,3 remarked Dick Clement of Steptoe, ‘in that series, there’s a real sense of sadness and frustration, which became something of a trend at the time. Without doubt, the best situation comedy has something more going for it; we wanted that as part of our work too.’4

The making of Porridge

‘Sadness and frustration’ were prevalent in Britain by the time Porridge was launched in 1974 a decade after the writers met amid the optimism of the Sixties. Economic recession intensified disillusionment with British society, which led to industrial strikes, racial violence and terrorist attacks. It was that national mood of disillusionment upon which the writers of Porridge played so cleverly with their cynical, criminal anti-hero, Norman Stanley Fletcher. One inspiration for this comedy of confinement was the writers’ experience of National Service: the peacetime conscription of two years’ duration, imposed on young British men between 1948 and 1960 to help fight the Cold War and maintain colonial rule. Clement had served in the Royal Air Force, La Frenais in the army, and that experience helped them to understand how Fletcher’s little platoon of misfits functioned. ‘Ian and I both did national service, which was invaluable training for writing Porridge, being thrown together with people from disparate backgrounds.’5 Fletcher’s character was also inspired by literary sources, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). The first Russian book that criticized Stalinism to be freely published, it was set in a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s. Its hero gets through another day of icy incarceration with the help of a small band of other inmates. That idea became the most significant theme in Porridge, as Dick Clement remembers: ‘the mental attitude was a little bit like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; I know that sounds pretentious but nevertheless that book was all about little victories, little tiny things that got you through it so that was the attitude that Fletcher conveyed’.6 Another literary influence was Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk. Published in 1923, its hero is a Czech soldier in the Austro–Hungarian army during the First World War who is sent to prison for questioning authority. A satire on empire, the military and the Catholic Church, it was one of the first anti-war novels, influencing Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, as well as Dick Clement who said:

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I remember The Good Soldier Svejk, which I’d read in paperback and he again was someone who was a survivor who didn’t complain, and I thought that was an important part of Fletcher’s character: ok, he’d been banged up but he had admitted what he had done. He was totally lacking in self-pity … his attitude was ‘I’m here and I’ll now make the best of it.’7

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When it came to selecting one of the two pilots scripted by Clement and La Frenais, Porridge was not the writers’ first choice. They had wanted to develop I’ll fly You for A Quid, about a family of obsessive Welsh gamblers.8 ‘Ronnie said it might be more challenging to make Prisoner and Escort,’ remembered Clement, ‘the trouble was, we couldn’t think how we’d sustain it – after all, how could you make life inside seem funny?’9 The BBC’s Head of Comedy, Jimmy Gilbert, agreed with Barker and the decision to commission Porridge was made. Porridge formed part of the BBC’s long-term response to competition from commercial broadcasting. Launched in 1955, Independent Television (ITV) had exposed the BBC’s paternalistic approach to what Britons should see and hear. ITV’s combination of technical innovation and populist programming enabled it to trounce the BBC in the ratings war, taking three-quarters of its audience within two years of launching. Under the controversial directorship of Hugh Greene (brother of novelist Graham Greene) the BBC began a successful response to ITV in the 1960s, and crime drama was a beneficiary.10 Z Cars (BBC, 1962–78) presented a more realistic view of the police and criminals. Previously, the quintessential British cop show was Dixon of Dock Green (BBC, 1955–76). Based on the 1950 film The Blue Lamp, actor Jack Warner’s avuncular bobby on the beat, George Dixon, dispensed justice and morality with a firm but gentle hand. Fletcher made this point in series two of Porridge when he referred to The Blue Lamp as ‘a film glamourising that despicable bunch what put me in here’, and later he complains that he isn’t allowed to watch Z Cars.11

The making of Porridge

The comedy actor Kenneth Williams was among older viewers who disliked the new style of crime drama. He shared an agent with Barker and when he heard that Porridge had been commissioned Williams was apalled, writing ‘Ronnie Barker is embarked on a disastrous course – comedy set in a prison! It is drab and anachronistic and utterly foolish in conception.’12 BBC executives knew they’d picked a winner. When Porridge launched in the summer of 1974, it was the cover feature on the BBC magazine Radio Times. Clement and La Frenais told readers, ‘the casting – that’s the key – if the actors are right, then all your troubles are over’.13 Of course that’s true of any comedy or drama. But it mattered more in this case because the flinty authenticity of Porridge had to be softened by the lead role being taken by a well-liked comic actor whom people would not mind entering their homes. Clement and La Frenais had written the pilot for Ronnie Barker sure in the knowledge he would play the role of Fletcher if Porridge was chosen for development. Born in 1929, Barker was brought up in a lower-middle-class home in Oxfordshire. After a grammar school education and a brief spell as a bank clerk he had made his way into provincial repertory theatre and from there into BBC radio during the 1950s. He got his break on TV in the 1960s thanks to Jimmy Gilbert. Gilbert devised The Two Ronnies (1971–87), which Barker wrote with his co-star Ronnie Corbett. The three men had also worked together in satire. It’s often assumed that the anti-establishment, sketchbased satirical comedy which emerged in the 1960s was the antithesis of formats like the sitcom – with an Oxbridge elite dominating the former and a legacy of working-class Music Hall entertainment dominating the latter. In fact, the actors and writers of satire and sitcom formed a nucleus of progressive comedy. Barker and Corbett worked on the David Frost current affairs show The Frost Report (codevised by Gilbert), appearing with John Cleese on the famous ‘Class

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Sketch’ of 1966 that mocked the British class system; and most of the Monty Python team (Cleese, Idle, Palin and Jones) at various times helped to script The Two Ronnies. For a popular comic actor like Barker to take on such a daring sitcom was therefore not unusual in the context of how British comedy developed between the 1950s and 80s. It broadened the show’s appeal, not only because Barker was a star but also because he was known to audiences of different social backgrounds with different tastes. He relished the role and later said: There’s a lot of me in there – not that I break into post offices, of course! There’s plenty of my father in Fletch too. Although the character was a Cockney and I was born in Oxford, he was working class and I could relate to him. He was easy to play and I didn’t have to think much about it – unlike with Arkwright in Open All Hours, where I had to consider a different background entirely.14 14

The forty-four year old required no assistance to transform himself into Fletcher, beyond some brown dye sprayed onto his grey hair. David Jason, who played Blanco in the sitcom, recalled Barker’s stagecraft: ‘I was two hours in the make up chair, doubling my age to become Blanco … The way Ronnie turned into Fletcher, by contrast, was breathtakingly effortless. He’d spend a little bit of time in hair and make-up, put the chewing gum in his mouth and he was off. He put on that character like he put on a coat.’15 Fulton Mackay was fifty when he got the role of Fletcher’s adversary. Mackay’s fellow Scot, Jimmy Gilbert, suggested him to the writers having trained at RADA with him. The show’s director, Sydney Lotterby, oversaw the rest of the casting. By choosing the 26-year-old Richard Beckinsale he made the part of Godber more substantial than the writers originally intended. Barker had suggested Paul Henry for the part – an actor known to millions as the well-meaning, woolly-hatted simpleton,

The making of Porridge

Benny, in the ITV soap opera Crossroads. But Lotterby showed them all a tape of Beckinsale performing in a sitcom called The Lovers and they agreed he was their man. Born in Nottinghamshire to an AngloBurmese father and an English mother, Beckinsale had left school at fifteen and had a series of manual jobs before winning a scholarship to RADA. The Lovers (ITV, 1970–1) had been his first starring role. Written and directed by Jack Rosenthal, Beckinsale played a Mancunian bank clerk called Geoffrey – one half of a mismatched couple alongside Paula Wilcox as Beryl. It was a short-lived but popular show and he won a Best Newcomer Award for the role in 1971. The fourth member of the leading quartet was 47-year-old Brian Wilde. A RADA-trained, Lancashire-born actor, he was also famous for his role as ‘Foggy’ in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine (BBC1, 1973–2010), which both Jimmy Gilbert and Sydney Lotterby directed. La Frenais commented: I think of Brian as the civil servant overlooked for his expected promotion; the man in the rain at the bus stop who’s jostled aside and left standing in the rain … He brought much more to the character of Barrowclough than I think, in truth, Dick and I put on the page. It was too easy just to be a patsy to Fletcher’s cunning, or the downtrodden husband. Brian enobled Mr Barrowclough with compassion and a sweet natured perseverance that never allowed him to be pitiful or ridiculous.16

By all accounts, the cast and crew worked exceptionally well together and even those with regrets about only having brief roles or small ones, have said that working on Porridge was one of the happiest experiences of their lives. ‘This is in danger of sounding bland,’ said Clement, ‘but I don’t remember a serious difference of opinion or a cross word. We went each week to the read-through of each episode and our main concern was ensuring that the script was the right length.’17

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Like most sitcoms between the 1970s and 90s, Porridge was recorded on videotape in front of a live studio audience. Rehearsals took place over the previous week and any location filming was shot, edited and dubbed over a two-week period prior to the final studio recordings on Sunday evenings at Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush. The audience at Television Centre watched the film footage on monitors to link it with the action being performed live in front of them. The edited show that the viewing public saw each week began with a peculiar credit sequence that set it apart from all other sitcoms. Amid silence, a prison van drives onto a platform of London’s King’s Cross Station to put Fletcher on a train to the North. Then we see a sign over a Victorian prison gate saying ‘HM Prison Slade’, followed by a sequence of prison doors and gates being slammed shut and swiftly locked by crisply uniformed arms, with Mr Mackay briefly visible.18 The sound of unforgiving metal gates closing is accompanied by the stentorian tones of a judge sending the show’s main character to prison: 16

Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner. We therefore feel constrained to commit you for the maximum term allowed for these offences. You will go to prison for five years.19

With deliberate irony, Ronnie Barker voices the judge sentencing Fletcher, and pronounces a sharp ‘s’ in the word ‘casual’ that hints at the mockery of authority that follows, in much the same way that Peter Cook or John Cleese effected their satires of upper-class men. From the start, the viewer is confronted with the chilling reality of incarceration. Dick Clement devised the title sequence after a prison visit, where he noticed the constant sound of jangling keys and doors being locked as if the guards were perpetually reiterating the taking of the inmates’ freedom.

The making of Porridge

Clement and La Frenais absorbed a lot about the penal system in order to turn the pilot into a series. They visited three London jails built during the nineteenth century – Brixton, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs. Over drinks, they met the Governor of Brixton who (like most of the people who run Britain’s prisons) had a more rounded view of the penal system than politicians and the media. ‘He was a humane, civilized man,’ recalls Clement, and when asked what he would change about the system, ‘he gave it serious thought and said he’d like to be in charge only of people who deserved to be in prison, instead of alcoholics, drug addicts or the mentally unstable.’ However, on their visit to Brixton, the writers ‘became profoundly depressed’ according to Clement.20 La Frenais adds: ‘after being shown around the place [we] felt really deflated, thinking we’d definitely picked the wrong pilot from the series Seven of One to pursue’.21 The whole experience was so depressing that they briefly doubted whether the series would work, as Clement recalls:

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We became very daunted: writing Prisoner and Escort was one thing, but we came out of the prisons and said to each other: ‘How the hell do we make a whole series based in prison funny?’ At the end of the day, prisons are grim and we knew our show had to reflect that; it would have been dishonest and cheap to trivialize it, thereby not dealing with the fact that it really is a heavy place.22

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There came a sign that humour could be found in prison. While visiting Wormwood Scrubs, the writers were standing outside in a courtyard when a paper aeroplane floated down from the barred window of a cell high above. They picked it up, and saw written on it the words: ‘Contact police. Am being held here against my will.’23 That note, and their determination to press on, led Clement and La Frenais to meet an ex-convict, Jonathan Marshall, who was the author of a pioneering handbook, How to Survive in the Nick.24 Marshall had been an advisor on Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel about gang violence, A Clockwork Orange (1971). In 1973 he became the first ex-prisoner to be elected to the council of the Howard League for Penal Reform. Marshall was one of several ex-cons who became authors in this period. Another was Frank Norman, who wrote a popular memoir of prison life, Bang to Rights (1958); like Marshall he was involved in prison reform, addressing it in the polemical Lock ’em up and Count ’em (1970). Their success is a reminder that by the time Porridge was broadcast more people were aware of the harsh realities of prison life.25 Frank Norman was a fan of Porridge but Jonathan Marshall played an important part in the sitcom’s genesis. ‘He taught us a lot about the slang used in prison and was helpful in providing plenty of hints,’ says La Frenais, ‘but the hardest thing was how to work a plot into such a small, enclosed captive world each week, where the parameters are so tight; this is why the show turned out more character-driven than most series.’26 Marshall handed them the key to the problem, as Ian La Frenais recalls:

The making of Porridge

Jonathan started telling us stories about being inside and kept using the phrase ‘little victories’, which struck a chord. Dick and I thought that maybe this was the key: we could make the show about a man with a fondness for earning ‘little victories’ – beating the system on a daily basis, even in the most trivial ways.27

Ronnie Barker suggested the title. ‘Doing porridge’ is British slang for serving a prison sentence, which entered common usage in the 1830s when porridge was the basic prison meal in the era when the modern penal system was established. The BBC production team did all they could to achieve visual authenticity. The prison gatehouse shown in the title sequence belonged to St Albans jail in Hertfordshire near London, which closed in 1925. But that was as far as they were allowed to go. Penal reform had briefly become a national issue in the 1960s and 70s as part of the general demand for civil rights at the time. This, coupled with the BBC’s more realistic depiction of police practices, made government officials suspicious of the programme makers’ aims, so the Home Office refused to allow them to film inside a working prison. By the time Porridge was adapted for the cinema in 1979, the sitcom had become so popular that officials changed their mind and allowed filming inside HMP Chelmsford, of which more in Chapter 6. Sydney Lotterby remembers how different it was in 1974: ‘the prison authorities weren’t very helpful. They wouldn’t let us film anywhere, even outside a prison. And although Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were allowed in while they were conducting their research, neither the designer nor myself were allowed to look around.’28 Given that Dixon of Dock Green epitomized a romantic view of law enforcement, it was a fitting coincidence that one of the production assistants on Porridge, Ray Butt, had worked on Dixon. It was useful too. When the Home Office refused permission to film the opening shots of cell doors slamming it was Butt’s police contacts,

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made while filming Dixon, that solved the problem. With their help the sequence was shot in cells at Shepherd’s Bush police station near Television Centre. Some scenes were filmed in a psychiatric hospital that resembled a prison, where curious inmates came to watch filming each day. Most of the interiors were shot at Ealing Studios – famous for producing comedy dramas between 1945 and 1955 epitomizing that British stoicism in which ‘muddling through’ is achieved with a moderate disrespect for authority. When the government refused access to a real prison, Sydney Lotterby called in a BBC set designer to recreate one at Studio 3B, Ealing. Tim Gleeson had worked for the Corporation since 1957 and had been the designer on some of the Seven of One pilots, including ‘Prisoner and Escort’. ‘Tim, we’re desperate,’ Lotterby told him, ‘is there any way we can conjure up a multilevel prison at Ealing studios?’ The solution came when he discovered an old tank, which had been used to film underwater sequences. It provided the vistas they needed, as Lotterby recalls: ‘the ground floor of the prison was built on the floor of the tank, the ground floor of the film studio became the first floor of the prison, with cells positioned along the passageway, and then Tim built another floor on top of that, which could be walked on. It was a very clever design.’29 Porridge became so successful that even Blue Peter – Britain’s best-loved factual children’s TV show – visited in 1977, with the presenter John Noakes giving young viewers a tour of the set. The end of an episode was more conventional than its chilling opening. The veteran composer Max Harris wrote ‘a Cockney tune’ for the sequence, which usually began with a freeze shot of Fletcher delivering the closing punch line of each episode’s ‘little victory’ over the system.30 Harris’s jaunty tune left viewers with the reassuring sound of a traditional sitcom in their ears, suggesting that ‘you have been watching’ just a bit of cheeky rebellion, when in fact – as well they knew – viewers had been laughing at a subversive comedy about crime and its relationship to class and power in modern Britain.

The making of Porridge

Of course, Porridge could not be an uncompromising work of social realism or it would not have reached a mainstream audience, nor would it have been so funny. Drug-taking (which became rife in prisons in the 1970s) and masturbation (which always has been) are never shown, though both practices are referred to in dialogue. Violence could not be shown in a programme broadcast before the 9.00 pm ‘watershed’. The action rarely went beyond verbal intimidation and the occasional threat of a punching, as in the pilot episode when Mackay is escorting Fletcher to Slade by train: FLETCHER You’ll wait till the train gets a bit of speed up outside Hemel Hempstead and chuck me out the window, won’t you? Put it down on the official report as attempted escape. BARROWCLOUGH He wouldn’t do that. FLETCHER No, s’pose not … he couldn’t spell Hemel Hempstead, he’d wait till we got to Rugby. MACKAY Now look! (Clenching his fist) I’m a reasonable man, but one more allegation of brutality and I’m going to let you have it.31 Mackay warns Fletcher not to try anything on the train journey to Slade.

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Swearing was more of a problem in the search for authenticity. It was rare on British television until the 1990s, so euphemisms were used that enabled the characters to express their feelings without offending viewers. The derogatory term ‘scrote’ came from American prison slang; others were invented: ‘nerk’ was used instead of ‘berk’, Cockney rhyming slang for Berkeley Hunt. ‘Naff’ was used as a substitute for ‘fuck’, and because Fletcher loved the term ‘Naff orf!’ it became a catchphrase with the public. ‘People think we invented the word “naff”,’ said La Frenais, ‘but “naff” was in Keith Waterhouse’s book Billy Liar … so we did borrow that.’32 Clement and La Frenais wrote the first episode of Porridge in Manchester while their musical adaptation of Waterhouse’s book – Billy – was playing in the city, so it was fresh in their minds. The show’s realism was slightly undermined by the fact that there were few ‘noises off’ when dialogue was taking place, something that Sydney Lotterby later regretted: ‘I’m disappointed with that aspect. At the time it was felt background noise would be a distraction; it’s a shame I didn’t do something because there’s always noise in prison.’33 The result was a stagey atmosphere in scenes that were shot on studio sets. In the cell shared by Fletcher and Godber where most of the comedy takes place, the lack of ‘noises off’ inadvertently conveyed an atmosphere of privacy that in reality is denied to prisoners, despite the fact that most spend over twenty hours a day in their cells. Still, the writers and production team strove to make the show as realistic as they could. One of the most celebrated episodes, ‘A Night In’, had a special set built for it so that viewers saw all sides of the cell, in order to convey the shock of incarceration that Godber goes through. Porridge also became more representative in the final series by varying the extras. Production Manager Mike Crisp remembers:

The making of Porridge

I did some research and discovered that most prisoners are aged between eighteen and thirty and representative of an ethnic mix, whereas the people used as extras in the [first and second] series were all old lag look-alikes – mainly white and aged between fifty and sixty. When I took over, I changed all that and brought in a range of people to play non-speaking roles. Overall, I think it worked quite well.34

Porridge coincided with a similar breakthrough in programming, Within These Walls (ITV, 1974–8). Set in a women’s prison and starring Googie Withers as Governor Faye Boswell it was the first prison drama on British television. It too was popular, although the show’s gritty storylines focused on the lives of prison officers. The advisor to its writer was a former governor of Holloway women’s jail in London; but Within These Walls was credited with less authenticity than Clement and La Frenais’s sitcom for exactly that reason. Their own advisor, Jonathan Marshall, slammed it in the press, saying ‘the scripts are just not realistic; they do not ring true. The series is garbage. You’ve only got to talk to the girls who have stayed [in Holloway] to know what it’s really like. The trouble is [the producers] got all their advice and background material from the point of view of the authorities.’35 Porridge was an instant success. The writers got an inkling of what the public thought on 6 September 1974, the morning after the first episode was broadcast and before they’d even had a chance to read the reviews. Dick Clement was still supplementing his writing income by directing commercials and he overheard his crew discussing last night’s TV: ‘No one realized I was involved in the series’, he recalls, ‘so when they started talking about Porridge, my ears began flapping. It was very interesting because I got an immediate sense that the show had made a connection; the episode had been a hit and here was instant feedback – it’s hard to get that kind of buzz these days.’36

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The national press agreed with Clement’s film crew. Reviewing the first series, The Guardian’s Peter Fiddick was struck by the realistic tone of the programme: ‘Setting a comedy series in a prison imposes restrictions that seem to close visibly like an Edgar Allan Poe cell the more you think of them. [But] Clement and La Frenais seem to have absorbed something about prisons and their constraints, on which to build. It could be a new source of comedy.’37 Shaun Usher, TV critic of the Daily Mail, gave it a guarded welcome: Being in prison is not much funnier than breaking a leg, and setting any programme behind bars leads to obvious restriction on scene and storyline. So Porridge ought to have run out of puff, well within sight of its launching episode. Not so, it’s a ribald, well observed project, a stew of styles ranging from slightly enlarged reality to slapstick and slick joke-cracking which, against the odds, doesn’t come out as a mess. Of course, there’s an honourable tradition of idolising and idealising crooks, as Robin Hood and Dick Turpin would testify … it’s that minor reservation which tends to modify 24

my enthusiasm for hilarious robbery, witty grievous bodily harm and giggling fraud.38

The show’s realism was essential to its appeal. One typical audience survey of 1977 found that viewers thought the programme showed ‘an almost frighteningly genuine and authentic prison atmosphere’.39 For Clement and La Frenais, the litmus test was how popular it was in prisons among inmates and staff. Some officers were told to watch it as part of their training. Peter Hunt, who worked in the service for over thirty years, remembers: When I joined, back in 1974 … my principal officer told us that Porridge was starting and if anyone wanted to know what prison was like, it was best to watch it. Because, although it was a comedy, it was basically a true reflection of prison life at that time. He also told us that we’d see every type of

The making of Porridge

character in Porridge during our service – and he was right … Although you had to allow for the stretching of the characters and the incidents in order to create funny scenes, I could relate to what they were focusing on – often the mundane little incidents. In the days the sitcom was written, the toilet paper issued to prisoners was old, stiff, shiny stuff, and they often tried pinching the softer stuff issued to staff. Exploring incidents such as that is why the programme was much more realistic than anything else written about the prison service.40

Even the populist right wing Daily Express – with a punitive approach to law and order – admitted that Porridge had ‘disarmed critics on all sides of the law’: At first, a prison comedy show sympathetic to the inmates was frowned upon by hunters and hunted alike. Police and warders were suspicious that it would take the mickey out of officialdom – and it does. The criminal classes thought it would show them up in a bad light if life ‘inside’ appeared to be too soft – and it does.41 Its popularity among all those in the penal system continued to be noted by the media. After interviewing delegates at the Prison Officers annual conference in 1977, the News of the World reported that ‘it is top viewing with prison officers, even though old lag Ronnie Barker usually wins his weekly battle with authority’. Delegates admitted that ‘life inside tends to revolve around TV. Without it … the tensions and overcrowding could lead to disturbances and even riots.’42 Most prisoners were locked in their cells at 8.30 pm at precisely the time when the BBC broadcast the show, but most found ways to watch it. Erwin James remembers that, ‘when I was inside, Porridge was a staple of our TV diet. In one high-security prison a video orderly would be dispatched to tape the programme each week. If they missed it, they were in trouble.’43 On the other hand, denying prisoners the opportunity to watch the show was often used as a disciplinary measure, such was the show’s popularity.44

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Outside jail, the Porridge audience was initially working and lower middle class. Screened in a period of economic recession and labour unrest, when class consciousness in Britain reached toxic levels, Clement and La Frenais’s sitcom captured a national mood of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Yet, the greatness of this sitcom was that it quickly embraced millions of hard-working, law-abiding people from different social backgrounds. Most people love maverick heroes who stick a finger up at the elites, institutions or customs, which they blame for their frustrated lives. Porridge effected no more social change than any other television show. But as the jailers’ keys clanged in the locks of Slade Prison for the first time on that September night in 1974 a new vista opened up in situation comedy, into which almost half the British people peered for entertainment, validation and – ironically – escape.

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The making of Porridge

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Radio Times launches the first series of Porridge in 1974. Radio Times, 31 August–6 September 1974.

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2  ‘Rough Justice’: Class and power in Porridge Porridge is one of the most sharply observed comedies about class in Britain. Screened between the Three Day Week and Punk Rock, it touched a nerve in the British at a time when class relations were at their most volatile since the General Strike of 1926. As Fletcher remarks ‘do you know this country is on the verge of economic ruin? This once-great nation of ours is teetering on the brink of an abyss.’1 A running joke was Fletcher’s idea – offered as ironic comfort for incarceration – that the inmates of Slade Prison were better off than the rest of the country at liberty beyond its walls. The pilot episode of Porridge was broadcast on Sunday, 1 April 1973, the same day as the ailing Conservative government of Edward Heath tried to control Britain’s hyperinflation and trade union strikes with the introduction of ‘Phase Two’ of its incomes policy. ‘New Faces, Old Hands’, the opening episode of the first series of Porridge, was broadcast on 5 September 1974, just before the General Election of 10 October that rejected Heath and returned a Labour government under Harold Wilson. Like many Britons at the time, Fletcher was as scathing about unions as he was about bosses. When he praises how ‘regimented’

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the Chinese are (based on the fact that Chinese restaurant menus are numbered), Warren chips in with the idea that if everyone in China jumped up and down it would cause ‘a tidal wave that would engulf America’. In reply, Fletcher says ‘[It’d] never work in England … Not a snowball’s. The British working man wouldn’t demean himself by jumping in the air in case he spilt his tea.’2 Porridge was made in a period of disillusionment with the optimism of the 1960s and claims that Britain was becoming a ‘classless society’. Class barriers were certainly blurred by the film, TV, sport and pop stars of the Sixties, who became figureheads of a slightly more mobile nation. But the number of people who thought class conflict was a feature of British society rose at the same time – mainly because aspiration was thwarted by the resilience of institutionalized privilege, from public schools to the professions. On eighteen occasions between 1961 and 1996, Gallup asked whether there was class struggle in the UK, and the number answering ‘Yes’ rose from 60 to 80 per cent in that period.3 Yet, while viewers enjoyed the joke that you were better off in prison, the popularity of the first prison-based sitcom is extraordinary given that it was broadcast when the crime rate in Britain was soaring, and with it public anxiety about criminals. In the Victorian era when most British prisons were built, there had been a 50 per cent fall in the rate of indictable offences per head of the population. A steady rise began in the 1920s, but a step change occurred in the period 1955–91, when the rate of offences rose ten times, and was forty times higher than it had been in 1901. Increased levels of violence were recorded in the period that Porridge was broadcast, up from 14,142 offences in 1960 to 95,044 by 1980.4 Burglary was also a feature of the soaring crime rate – which, in a period of rising living standards, was partly attributable to the number of working-class people who felt left behind by the consumer society. This was a time when people had more stuff to steal, but when possessions like TVs were still valuable enough for burglars to sell on.5

C lass and pow er in Porridge

During the 1970s and 80s, men were particularly affected by a decline in the heavy industries of the West, compounded by the economic recession of the time. Although women still struggled to be accepted in the workplace, the growth of modern technological industries and the service sector meant more opportunities for women in white-collar office work that many men were unprepared for. Unemployment among young working-class males (20–24 years old) rose from less than 25 per cent in 1971 to 35 per cent in 1978, reaching an all time high of 50 per cent in 1983, before new generations were trained to adapt to the economic restructuring of the late twentieth century.6 The male prison population rocketed in line with the crime rate, almost doubling between 1945 and 1975, from under 20,000 to over 40,000 (and doubling again to over 80,000 in the period up to 2005).7 Yet, prison was widely seen to be an inadequate remedy: liberal reformers thought it didn’t address the social causes of crime or the high rate of recidivism, while conservatives wanted a return to more punitive justice. Capital punishment was abolished in Britain in 1967, seven years before Porridge launched, but there was strong public support for its reintroduction, especially during the IRA’s bombing campaigns on mainland Britain. All of which begs the question, why was Porridge so successful in an era when the British were so anxious about crime and disorder? Part of the answer lies in the social background of the show’s original viewers. It was especially popular with working- and lowermiddle-class Britons: a BBC survey of 1977 found that 57.8 per cent were working class and 37.4 per cent lower middle, while only 4.8 per cent of viewers were upper middle.8 Its moderate anti-establishment views, with individuals briefly ‘getting one over’ on authority, together with its satire of the ways that class-consciousness thwarts ambition, appealed to millions who felt trapped in the most immobile society in the Western world. According to a Gallup survey of 1973, 60 per cent of Britons thought that the main causes of rising crime were: ‘a general

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breakdown in respect for authority, law and order’ and that ‘laws were too lenient and did not let the police do their job’.9 Yet Porridge steadily acquired a cross-class appeal among this majority, for whom Fletcher’s anti-authoritarian outlook would have epitomized Britain’s moral malaise. Perhaps the broad appeal of Porridge lies in the fact that its criminals are behind bars and not coming to get the viewer any time soon. As the Daily Mail TV critic, Shaun Usher, argued in his assessment of the first series, ‘villains, usually slangily articulate, always thinking and speaking a sort of foreign language, make good company. Always providing that they aren’t slicing off your ears … Clement and La Frenais, while affectionate towards petty crooks, are not too rose-tinted about them. This makes their series funnier and easier to accept.’10 Consequently, people who felt thwarted by authority, and those who felt threatened by a lack of respect for it, could all enjoy Fletcher’s outlook. ‘It’s about authority,’ observed Ian La Frenais, ‘the most successful comedies are about have-not’s they’re not about rich people … More and more people have been polarised so to see that weekly battle of authority, of coming up against the system and winning a little victory, is more important than the criminal thing.’11 His co-writer added ‘I think it’s a British sense of stubbornness, a disinclination to play by the rules.’12 Erwin James, the criminal turned author, agrees: ‘In spite of his unapologetic criminality,’ wrote James, ‘incorrigible Fletcher epitomized the little guy who, with the odds stacked against him, constantly fights against an intransigent system.’13 Characters in Porridge rarely become caricatures. The rounded humanity of Slade’s inmates is clear from the first episode when we’re shown their induction process. It’s ironically known as ‘Reception’ as if this were a hotel check-in; but instead of being given door keys and having luggage taken to your room, clothes are swapped for uniforms, urine samples are taken, and men are asked whether

C lass and pow er in Porridge

Mackay explains daily prison routine at the induction of Godber, Fletcher and Heslop.

they’re gay and if they have STDs. In his guide to prison life, Jonathan Marshall wrote: ‘the important part of this procedure is that you are given a number. The dehumanizing part of the system has begun.’14 ‘We’re about to be dehumanized,’ Fletcher tells a frightened Godber in ‘New Faces, Old Hands’, ‘first they give us a number, take away our personal possessions. Then they give us a thorough medical check-up and we have a bath in six inches of lukewarm water.’15 Marshall also told the writers that the routine of prison life, structured by myriad rules and regulations, was a perpetual extension of the induction process. Before the medical officer inspects the men, Mackay makes Fletcher explain the routine to which they must submit. It’s worth quoting at length: MACKAY You, laddy – you Mr Godber – first time isn’t it? You must be wondering what an average day in prison is like. Tell him Fletcher. FLETCHER Exactly like the day before, Mr Mackay. MACKAY T  he voice of experience. And tell him how the average day begins.

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FLETCHER Begins at 7.00 am. You’ll be woken by a persistent and deafening bell. Then the screws will come round – MACKAY I beg your pardon. FLETCHER The prison officers will come round. Offering such encouragements as ‘Wakey, wakey, get your socks on, move you ’orrible creatures.’ We shall respond to this badinage with such remarks as ‘Good morning, sir,’ ‘Good Lord is that the time?’ or ‘Who’s been having your old lady while you’ve been on night duty?’ MACKAY Very comical Fletcher. Eight o’clock slop out, eight ten breakfast. Eight fifteen return to cell, nine o’clock – yes, Fletcher? FLETCHER Slop out again, Mr Mackay, followed by work till eleven fifteen when we – MACKAY Exercise. Walking in pairs, five to six yards apart, no conversing to pairs in front or behind. This is followed by the highlight of the day … (FLETCHER turns to an increasingly dismayed Lennie) FLETCHER Glad you came? MACKAY Fletcher – 34

FLETCHER Highlight of the day – dinner, sir. MACKAY Which is – Nourishing is it not? FLETCHER Can’t wait sir. MACKAY Midday, bang up. (LENNIE looks hopeful) MACKAY Not what you think laddy – back to your cells. Thirteen hundred, slop out, work, tea, evening association, which means in principle that you can follow a wide range of recreational activities; which in practice means television or ping pong. FLETCHER Yeah, but only till seven. When there’s only news and kid’s stuff. So if you’re a fan of Z Cars, my son, forget it. […] MACKAY Seven thirty, slop out, supper, seven forty-five, lights out. Any questions? FLETCHER Any point? MACKAY None whatsoever. At ease.16

C lass and pow er in Porridge

As Michel Foucault observed in his study of prison, Discipline and Punish, dehumanization was the essence of a system that no longer tortured the body. Since the nineteenth century, when liberty came to be seen as a universal human right, punishment became more about incarceration and the denial of life’s pleasures and liberties, like sex or alcohol and the ability to choose your food or television programmes. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights. If it is still necessary for the law to reach and manipulate the body of the convict, it will be at a distance, in the proper way, according to strict rules, and with a much ‘higher’ aim.17

The practice of ‘slopping out’ that Mackay refers to in the induction scene was the most degrading aspect of the ‘economy of suspended rights’ in British prisons. Since there were no lavatories in cells, prisoners were given a pot to defecate in; overcrowded cells, designed by the Victorians for one person but now housing two or three, meant that men were also forced to defecate in front of cellmates. Every morning and evening throughout the land, corridors and gangways were filled with the stench of shit and piss as prisoners queued up to empty out their pots. The practice was only ended in 1998.18 But a rare example of prison reform did go through in the year that Porridge was launched. In 1974, the British government ended the practice of using dietary restrictions to punish prisoners (for example, by putting them on bread and water) – although the weekly budget for feeding a prisoner remained half that of feeding a security dog. As Jonathan Marshall observed in How to Survive in the Nick, ‘the aim of the Home Office is not to have healthy, well-fed, satisfied prisoners running about the nick’.19

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Bad food is a theme of the sitcom, routinely mocked as one of the deprivations that inmates have to endure. And it’s the premise for the only mass act of rebellion in the show, when Fletcher and his followers stage a riot in the prison canteen in the episode ‘Disturbing the Peace’, hurling mashed potato at retreating prison officers. Conversely, on the rare occasions when the food is good it can actually prevent a riot, as Fletcher tells Barrowclough when MacLaren stages a rooftop protest against prison conditions: BARROWCLOUGH If we don’t get him down it’ll be on News At Ten. FLETCHER Oh yes. Then Panorama. World In Action. Then the six-part serial in the Sunday Times, taking the lid off the penal system. FLETCHER They’ll be banging their mugs playing the Anvil Chorus on the radiators. You could have full-scale riot on your hands by tea-time – oh, hang about. What day is it? BARROWCLOUGH Thursday. FLETCHER Oh no, they won’t riot this afternoon. Good tea on a Thursday, 36

innit? Cauliflower cheese.20

The pathetic allure of a good cauliflower cheese was one of the ways that Clement and La Frenais showed how prison routine institutionalizes inmates. Bad though the food usually is, when stolen from the prison kitchen it’s a commodity that’s illicitly traded for goods like tobacco, or else enjoyed as a rare treat. In the episode ‘Just Desserts’, Fletcher’s stolen tin of pineapple chunks becomes a symbol both of material deprivation and of the little luxuries, which like the little victories, make prison life bearable. ‘Thickly cut chunks of delicious pineapple, soaked in a heavy syrup, from the sunkissed shores of Honolulu,’ he says of them in a rhapsody that conveys the freedom his tin of contraband represents.21 Another explanation for the popularity of Porridge lies in the writers’ subtle dissection of the British class system. Clement and La Frenais humanized the characters by showing how the class into which

C lass and pow er in Porridge

you are born directly affects your life chances and the likelihood of you going to prison. But although they explored the grey areas between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, the writers also satirized the liberal view that criminality is more a product of circumstance than of moral choice. The sitcom showed that while prison has a levelling effect by turning individuals into numbers, it does not erode the British class system but in fact recreates that system within its walls – a point that Jonathan Marshall made in his guide to prison life: The class structure inside seems to run parallel with that on civvy street in many ways. Bank robbers, safe-blowers, big money thieves and arms criminals are in a class that is considered the top. At the opposite end of the scale would be conglomeration of petty crooks including gas-meter bandits, bicycle thieves and council-house burglars. In between would be minor con artists and those involved in property offences ranging from shoplifting to factory breaking.22

The governor of Slade sits at the apex of the official hierarchy within the prison. Geoffrey Venables (played by Michael Barrington) is a well-meaning but jaded and ineffectual member of the privately educated upper middle classes. Always at his desk (usually popping pills or swigging a tonic for his frayed nerves), Venables never walks around the prison engaging with staff or inmates but keeps to his office, perpetually worried by the prospect of an escape or a riot, followed by a reprimand from the Home Office. He relies on the senior prison officer Mr Mackay to maintain discipline. The Scotsman defers to Venables as a social superior but regards him, like Barrowclough, as weak and is constantly urging the Governor not to trust the prisoners and to punish them more harshly for misdemeanours. This exchange with Barrowclough typifies their different views: BARROWCLOUGH I’ve always thought that the best way to encourage trust was to show them trust.

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MACKAY They’re criminals, man. BARROWCLOUGH They’re also human beings. MACKAY All right – but criminal human beings. And they too often take advantage of your lack of control. You lack discipline. You’re gullible.23

A former army Sergeant-Major, Mackay is a self-consciously upper-working-class man. Proud and pompous with little sense of humour, he’s contemptuous of the lower working class, whom he regards as morally dissolute. To him, Fletcher epitomizes that strata of British society at its worst: a cynical career criminal with no respect for authority, no work ethic and no moral compass. The moral dimension of Mackay’s contempt for Slade’s inmates is clear when Fletcher attempts a comparison between the marriages of two men who spend most of their time in prison:

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Mackay tells Barrowclough to toughen up.

C lass and pow er in Porridge

FLETCHER Matrimonially you and me are very similar. ’Cos while we’re in here we can’t be too sure what our old ladies are getting up to, can we? No difference. MACKAY There is a major difference, Fletcher. Your wives are criminals’ wives. They belong to the criminal classes with all their inherent traits of slovenliness and promiscuity. Our wives are the wives of uniformed men, used to a life of service and duty, decency and moral fibre. My house reflects my wife. FLETCHER Big, is it? MACKAY It’s spotless. And when I get home of an evening my uniform for the next day has been cleaned and pressed, the jacket with its buttons gleaming, the trousers with razor sharp creases and the shirt crisply laundered. FLETCHER Oh yes? So what’s that prove? Your old lady’s having it away with the bloke from the dry cleaners.24

Authority figures such as Mackay are a common feature of British comedy drama in film and television. One thinks, for example, of Windsor Davies’ Sgt. Major Williams in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (BBC, 1974–81), Inspector Blake (Blakey) in On The Buses (ITV, 1969–73), or William Hartnell’s Sergeant Grimshaw in Carry On Sergeant (1958). Although they have female counterparts, notably Hattie Jacques’s matron in Carry On Nurse (1959), they are usually male. And, with the rare exception of John Le Mesurier’s Sgt. Major Wilson in Dad’s Army – an effete, liberal-minded and displaced uppermiddle-class gent – they are usually from a similar social background to Mackay. Upper-working-class men and women have historically been employed by middle- to upper-class elites to discipline the ‘lower orders’ in order to get the most out of them. As well as reflecting a social divide within the working class, they have been the quintessential ‘straight guy’ in British comedy, providing the foil for a range of deviants, fools and rebels. The most popular of those rebels is the

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cheeky, wily petty criminal – in which sense Fletcher is as much an archetype as Mackay. Examples in British television include Arthur Daley of Minder (ITV, 1979–84) and Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses (1981–2003). The programme’s satire of class is framed by the folk memory of the Second World War. Like Dad’s Army it pokes fun at the Churchillian legends of class harmony, showing that inequalities and tensions in British society were not eradicated in the fight against Nazism. But whereas in Dad’s Army patriotism prevails and unites the classes against a foreign enemy, Fletcher’s little platoon of prisoners is in a perpetual struggle against authority. As Dick Clement said, ‘While Dad’s Army tapped into nostalgia for a very specific period, Porridge is a very different kettle of fish and it’s timeless in some respects, because the struggle for survival hasn’t changed.’25 Reform of the penal system was discussed in Porridge, serving audiences with liberal views that most wouldn’t accept from penal reformers. Early on, Fletcher says to Godber ‘Kids like you shouldn’t be in prison, son. It’s the system, see. You ain’t here to be rehabilitated. You’re here because of public revenge. Now it’s different for me. Occupational hazard being as my occupation’s breaking the law.’26 On another occasion, when prison inspectors visit his cell and ask for his views on rehabilitation, he seizes the opportunity: ‘Well obviously we can’t have total amnesty. Got to keep a few hard cases locked away so we can walk the streets at night. But you should do with the rest of us what they do in Scandinavia. Make us work off our debt to society. On farms, building sites, factories, hospitals.’27 At the same time, Fletcher is savvy enough to exploit sociological explanations for criminality like working-class illiteracy. When he organizes a petition to get parole for the elderly prisoner Blanco and shows it to Barrowclough, this exchange takes place: BARROWCLOUGH Just a minute. Sixty-three? There’s only forty fellows work in the mailbag room.

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FLETCHER Just goes to show the strength of their feelings, don’t it? BARROWCLOUGH There are twenty-three Xs on this sheet, Warren. WARREN Lot of folk in this nick can’t write. BARROWCLOUGH How can you be sure that these Xs are the genuine article? FLETCHER Don’t be daft, Mr Barrowclough, look at the difference in the handwriting! Oh, look here – one bloke’s spelt X with a Y. I’ll cross him off.28

While allowing Fletcher the opportunity to show how the class system stacks the odds against men like him, the writers took care not to sentimentalize his character. He’s a perennial cheat: a running joke in the show is that when he’s playing ‘draughts’ in the recreation area he wins by distracting opponents then moving their checkers, and if that doesn’t work he declares a draw at the slightest interruption. Fletcher never loses an opportunity to manipulate Barrowclough’s belief in the innate goodness of men for his own ends, thus confirming Mackay’s advice that ‘even the simplest request must be treated with deep mistrust and suspicion’.29 But Fletcher shares Mackay’s contempt for stupid inmates. Prisons contain a disproportionate number of people with low IQs as well as a poor education, a fact illustrated by the character of Cyril Heslop. Played by Brian Glover, he’s so dull and stupid that he exasperates Fletcher. Heslop also slowed down the comedy so that, after appearing in three episodes, he didn’t make it to the second series. Fletcher’s relationship with Godber is also free of sentimentality. Although he paternalistically tutors his young cell mate in how to survive prison, he’s contemptuous of formal education, and so hands Mackay a chance to mentor the young man. As well as taking pride in his job as a chef in the prison canteen, Godber believes in constructive recreation, pursuing hobbies like making matchstick models. Above all, he tries to gain an education by studying for a history qualification to add to the geography one he obtained at school. In a defining moment he tells

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Fletcher ‘one of the reasons I so desperately want to pass this exam is so’s I have a chance of not ending up like you’.30 Fletcher (whose one qualification is a plastering diploma gained in Borstal) sees study merely as an opportunity to ogle a female adult education officer. He sees no value in learning for its own sake, as he tells his cellmate in the episode ‘A Test of Character’: FLETCHER Only reason people learn geography is so they can teach other people geography. Ain’t no use to nobody. No use knowing the capital of Siam or what an isthmus is. […] There are certain things you can learn inside that you can become expert at. Like how to open a safe, steal a car, forge a banknote. Bloke I was in Maidstone with – Charlie Mossop, first offender he was, by the time he came out he was a brilliant forger. And he only went in for reckless driving. GODBER I’m fed up with crime. I want to go straight. FLETCHER (Looking appalled) How old are you son? GODBER Twenty-three. 42

FLETCHER Twenty-three and you want to go straight, what sort of attitude is that? Got your whole life before you.31

This reflected a point often made by prison reformers: that, instead of rehabilitating young offenders, what prisons do is to confine them with older, hardened criminals, creating a school for scoundrels that tutors the young in the techniques of crime and establishes quasiprofessional networks of criminality, which they use to reoffend once they’re released. Prison as a school for scoundrels has been a theme in British crime drama since the 1950s, as Steve Chibnall notes in his study of the genre: ‘Prison … reproduces criminal workers just as the class system reproduces industrial workers. For the criminal it is his essential environment, a theatrical space to practice and perfect the masculine performance that is so important to successful role playing in the underworld.’32

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Godber tries to break that cycle by pursuing a conventional education, but when he tries to study the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century one afternoon, he’s interrupted by Fletcher, who admits that ‘it’s very unsettling for a social misfit like me to have someone sat here who wants to better himself’.33 This prompts Mackay to protect the young man from his cellmate’s pernicious cynicism: GODBER I’m trying to study Mr McKay. You’re always encouraging education, rehabilitation – only there’s nowhere in this naffing nick conducive to it. MACKAY I’m afraid that won’t cut much ice with an ageing recidivist like Fletcher. FLETCHER Ageing what? MACKAY Recidivist. A person who pays his penance for performing a crime, goes out and straight off performs another one. FLETCHER Oh, you means a professional. MACKAY No, I mean an habitual criminal. Something which you may not have been if you’d stuck into your education like laddo here.34

Mackay endorses Godber’s attempt to better himself by studying history.

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Social dislocation caused by the war was one of the main explanations given for the rise in juvenile delinquency between the 1940s and 60s. The wartime evacuation of children from town to countryside, the absence of fathers on military duty, bereavement and homelessness caused by the Blitz, were all used after the war to explain family breakdown and rising crime – a point that Fletcher reiterates to justify his life choices: ‘Well, it was the war. We was always on the bomb sites, collecting shrapnel and that. Learning about sex in the airraid shelters during their off-peak hours. So eventually they sent me to a special school with other kids who were always playing truant. But we never learnt nothing.’35 Mackay is having none of it. Born into poverty during the Depression, he sees sociological explanations for criminality as excuses for a lack of moral fibre: MACKAY See me, I had to leave school at fourteen. Help bring a living wage into the house. Hard times in those days in the Lanarkshire coalfields. 44

My father was an unemployed miner but there were still eight children to provide for. FLETCHER Eight kids eh? He wasn’t unemployed the whole of the time then. […] MACKAY Let me tell you something. Not one of our family neglected education. Not one. Even under the most difficult circumstances like Godber here. I’ve had to pass exams you know … What’s the subject you’re studying, Godber? GODBER History. O’ Level like. Already got one O’ Level before I come inside. Geography. MACKAY That’s the spirit laddie. You stick in. And I’m telling you Fletcher, no I’m ordering you, you do nothing to hinder this lad’s concentration, otherwise get out.

In response to Fletcher’s sneers, Godber adds, ‘the point is not what exam I get, the point is that I got an exam. That’s what’s going

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to impress any future employer. That I had enough diligence and application to pass an exam under the most adverse circumstances imaginable.’36 Yet Fletcher also has a point to make about the odds being stacked against working-class people in a snobbish and nepotistic society, even if they do obtain a few qualifications. ‘You can go up for a job one day with all the qualifications in the world’, Fletcher tells him, ‘and get pipped by some nurk who’s never passed an exam in his life. But he’s got the right accent, plays for the local rugby club and he ain’t never been in no nick!’37 Ultimately, it is Mackay’s attempt to mentor Godber better than his adversary that makes him such a rounded character; and it helped to nuance the class politics of Porridge, preventing it from becoming a crude contest between ‘them and us’. Clement and La Frenais had other strategies to avoid accusations of romanticizing criminals. Even when the comedy revolves around inmates conning each other, they never do each other emotional or physical harm, beyond losing face or a stash of tobacco. Unlike prison break-out films, violence is occasionally threatened and sometimes referred to but rarely carried out on screen, and only then in a mild way with a fist held to the face or a bit of shoving and pushing. Although viewers were usually told why each character was in jail, their past misdemeanours were not dwelt upon and the effects of their crime on the victim were usually ignored. This actually reflected the reality of life in jail, where it’s part of prison etiquette not to ask questions about each other’s past. As Erwin James noted in his assessment of the show, ‘anyone who spends time on a prison landing soon realizes that the prison experience has very little to do with any crime that may have been committed to warrant it. Clement and La Frenais had this insight and populated their prison with characters who even today would be recognisable on any prison wing in the country.’38

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At the same time, Porridge showed that prisons do contain their own moral hierarchy that’s constructed, valued and ruthlessly policed by the prisoners themselves in order to help the prison function. A distinction is made between three tiers of prisoners, which mirrors the basic class pyramid of upper–middle–lower. At the bottom are desperate, inadequate thieves like Warren; they are joined at the bottom by wayward, opportunistic ‘kids’ like Godber who can be rehabilitated given the right leadership; then come the smart but small-time career criminals like Fletcher; and sitting at the apex is the ruthless, sociopathic organized crime boss. Slade’s monarch of mendacity is ‘genial’ Harry Grout, played by Peter Vaughan. With a long past of ‘mayhem and violence’ he runs most of the gambling and contraband rackets in the jail, including the drugs trade. We first encounter him in the episode ‘The Harder They Fall’.39 Godber trains for a boxing contest (a sport Mackay encourages as a form of muscular self-improvement), and is dismayed to be told that he has to take a dive at a fixed time so that Grout’s betting syndicate can clean up. As the young man’s mentor, Fletcher is summoned by the Godfather of Slade to secure his role in the scam. Although Grout employs a few heavies like ‘Crusher’ to concentrate minds, part of his quiet menace is that he appears to be cultivated – equipped with the mental and material trappings of conservative Middle England. He listens to BBC Radio Four, enjoying established programmes like The Archers, A Book at Bedtime or ‘a good play’. Like the corresponding character of Mr Bridger in The Italian Job (played by Noël Coward) he is a monarchist, values hard work, and is sincerely concerned by the economic recession of the time, as if his criminal empire is a legitimate part of the nation’s economy. Like Mr Bridger, Grout’s cell is decorated and furnished to make it as palatial as possible, complete with curtains, a rug, record player and radio – a home from home that shows he enjoys the favour of prison officers as well as the fear of inmates. As Fletcher says to Godber in ‘The Hustler’, ‘Officially, this hotel is run by a governor

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Harry Grout, Slade Prison’s real governor, gives Fletcher his orders.

appointed by the Home Office, Mr Venables. But in practice of course we knows different. In practice we know that genial Harry Grout can bring this nick to a standstill if he so wishes.’40 Dick Clement explained ‘the idea behind Grouty’: He’s the enemy within. Your enemy is not just the screws but also other prisoners, as any prison series or movie will tell you. You’re just as scared of the people within as you are of the authorities … Peter Vaughan created a very sinister yet funny prisoner who became a huge addition to the team.41

The sadistic menace of Harry Grout also enabled prison officers to be seen as relatively humane, adding further balance to the comedy drama. Mackay is positively benevolent in comparison, and it’s noteworthy that while Fletcher is anxious about his various scams being discovered, Harry Grout is the only person he’s visibly scared of. The untermenschen of the underworld are those who have committed sex crimes; but they are absent from Porridge with the

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Banyard, the ex-dentist, examines the horror of prison food.

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exception of the ex-dentist Banyard, played by Eric Dodson. He’s serving a sentence for molesting women while they were anaesthetized in his dentists’ chair; but his dramatic purpose is to highlight the fact that prisons contain a class structure. Dick Clement said ‘We had the defrocked dentist in Banyard to represent the occasional posh guy who ends up in prison.’42 Banyard thinks that, despite what he calls his ‘peccadilloes’, he’s socially superior to other inmates, a view that makes him even more unpopular. Ever the pragmatist, Fletcher finds a way to profit from Slade’s middle-class ‘elite’. In one episode he steals six rolls of the Governor’s soft toilet paper on a visit to his office then trades it with posh prisoners, as he explains to Godber: FLETCHER There are a few inmates with some refinement in this nick. Bottom landing, cell at the end, there’s some embezzlers in there. Mr Banyard, the unfrocked dentist. Well, those middle class white-collar felons … leapt at ’em, didn’t they? GODBER What d’you get?

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FLETCHER Well, they owe me, don’t they? Lot of nice middle class merchandise. I’m promised a cricket sweater, a pair of Hush Puppies and a box of after-dinner mints.43

The scene illustrates Fletcher’s aspirational fondness for ‘the finer things in life’, which he’s obtained in return for making Banyard’s visit to the lavatory feel like home. But aside from the fact that material goods can be cultural markers of class, there’s symbolism in soft paper: even the act of defecation common to all human beings is a more pleasant experience for the affluent than it is for the poor. Fletcher’s contraband highlights another aspect of the moral hierachy of prison: the difference between inmates who trade goods smuggled in or stolen from prison supplies, and those who steal from each other. The latter are seen as liars and cheats beyond redemption, who treat their fellow inmates with the same contempt they’ve shown the public. The character of Bernard Ives, a Liverpudlian fraudster played by Ken Jones, epitomized that sort of prisoner (and reinforced a British stereotype of ‘Scousers’ being thieves). Dick Clement recalled ‘Ives was definitely a sneaky little bastard who you always had to watch out for … Obviously you’ll get nasty characters in prison and that’s what we had to show.’44 Time and again, Porridge shows that there can be honour among thieves. Ives is the prime suspect when Fletcher investigates the theft of a tin of pineapples that he himself stole from the prison kitchen. With immaculate comic timing he earnestly says to the men gathered in his cell ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, gentlemen, but … there is a thief among us.’ When Warren points out the obvious, Fletcher responds with what he sees as an important moral distinction: That was stealing on the outside, Warren. Against civilians. That’s work, that is. Making a living. Skullduggery. But the theft to which I’m referring has been perpetrated within these walls. Which is despicable. A crime which offends the dignity of any normal law-abiding criminal.45

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Maclaren restrains Ives while Fletcher interrogates him about his missing pineapple chunks.

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Some viewers rejected these distinctions between different types of criminal. Kenneth Williams, who disliked the concept of Porridge when he first heard about it, detested the execution of it. After watching a ‘Christmas Special’ of the show in December 1975, he wrote in his diary: That ghastly series ‘Porridge’ about prison life was showing. Oh! How that ever became accepted for television is beyond me! The tastelessness, the romanticising of villainy … the business of making criminals attractive … the winking at corruption within the prison service … it is sickening and disgusting.46

Williams was a tortured working-class homosexual, so perhaps he had personal reasons for disliking a show that traded in moral ambiguity. Whatever the reason, his hatred of Porridge placed him in a different kind of minority. One reason why Porridge became popular beyond its core working-class audience is that it dared to show how power can thwart

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affluent, law abiding middle-class citizens as well as those whose poverty and ignorance leads them to choose a career in crime. The main character which the writers used to illustrate class power was not Banyard but Stephen Rawley, a corrupt judge who sent Fletcher to prison but who’s now been jailed for his own misdemeanours. In ‘Poetic Justice’ and ‘Rough Justice’ – a celebrated two-parter in the final series – Fletcher and Godber are forced to share a cell with the disgraced man. That leads Fletcher to question the legitimacy of his conviction and, more importantly, to question whether all men are truly equal before the law. Rawley, played by Maurice Denham, has been sentenced to three years for bribery and corruption, his need for more money stemming from his extramarital affair with a voracious nineteenyear-old go-go dancer whom he met at a regimental reunion dinner. Rawley’s backstory reflected the legacy of the Profumo Affair of 1963 when a working-class call girl, Christine Keeler, was found to be having an affair with the Conservative government’s married minister of war, John Profumo. The scandal rocked the British political establishment

Rawley chats to his old friend, Slade Governor Geoffrey Venables, after his arrival in prison.

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by exposing its moral hypocrisy and it contributed to a long-term decline of social deference in Britain. Rawley and Venables were privately educated at Winchester School, were officers in the Guards together, and are members of the same gentleman’s club in London. Rawley’s induction involves a friendly, if embarrassed, chat over a cigarette in the Governor’s office – in stark contrast to the dehumanizing process that Fletcher and Godber endured. The two are on first name terms, and Rawley discovers he’s not the only posh felon in Slade: ‘There isn’t anyone from the old school here, thank God,’ says Venables, to which the former judge replies, ‘there’s everything else though – officers, Clubmen, Rotarians. In the shower an embezzler came up to me and gave me a Masonic handshake.’47 Fletcher is furious that the Governor’s friend is given a cosy administrative job in the prison records department, while he’s had to resort to elaborate scams to get jobs in the library or the hospital. He’s also sure it’s only a matter of time until Rawley uses his connections to win the appeal against his sentence. Upper-class privilege, Fletcher points out, is not just something that keeps posh people out of prison; if they are sent down it can also be used to get them out too: FLETCHER You’re bound to get off. Old school tie, top lawyers. RAWLEY If they were that good, I’d be out on bail now. FLETCHER Listen, it’s a token stretch. Most of what you call us common folk never get the chance of bail. Some blokes are inside for months pending appeal. GODBER The same law that sent him down what sent us down, Fletcher. FLETCHER What are you saying, Godber? GODBER What I’m saying is, I think his presence here is very reassuring. It’s a vindication of our legal system. It proves that no one is beyond the reach of the law. FLETCHER I just ask myself for every one of his kind they nobble, how many’s getting away with it? The bloke who sent him up is probably worse than he is.48

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Fletcher tells his men why upper-class privilege makes Rawley different to them all.

Privilege is therefore maintained through connections to the society from which the privileged have only been partially and temporarily removed. That is apparent in the prison memoirs of Jeffrey Archer, the Conservative politician and novelist who served two years in jail for perjury, a harrowing experience made bearable by prisoners like Fletcher looking after him, but also by his knowledge that wealthy, influential friends and family were doing all they could to secure his early release. It’s a mirror image of the way that prison creates working-class criminal networks that can be activated on release – the difference being that, lacking elite connections, their release is likely to come later rather than sooner.49 Godber defends Rawley by maintaining that three men in a cell are three men in the same boat. But Fletcher refutes the idea that prison is a social leveller – in a passage of writing that’s so good it’s worth quoting at length: ‘Where you been – having a nightcap with the Chief Warders?’, he sneers when Rawley returns to their cell: RAWLEY Look, I have no influence in here. If I had I’d be in a single cell with a few books instead of sharing with people like …

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FLETCHER Go on, say it, people (crossing to the table) like us, say it. Listen, let me tell you something about people like us. We don’t make no alibis. We deserve to be here. But compared to you lot, there’s something very honest about our dishonesty. Some people like us had no way of getting things, except to take them. People like you, you had it all, but you wanted more. GODBER Look, he’s a criminal now. Are you saying that right’s only open to the poor? Don’t you think the rich have a right to be criminals as well? FLETCHER They better not try it. The unions will be on to them straight away. GODBER You’re inconsistent in your attitude. Inside is not out there. Inside’s another world it is. We’re all equal. We only have one enemy, that’s the screws. And we only have one purpose in life, that’s screwing the system. RAWLEY Godber is right. I know we’ve always been on opposite sides of the fence. You’re the sort of people I’d normally cross the street to avoid. But the fence is down now. FLETCHER I still think the gulf between us is immeasurably wide. I mean 54

him and me, and most of the lads in here, we come from the same background, ran the same streets. Your streets have rich kids riding round on bicycles waving tennis racquets. Rows of elm trees and hand-carved privet hedges. Don’t have no problems on your streets. RAWLEY Yes we do. I had to spend fifteen hundred pounds last year on Dutch Elm disease. FLETCHER Yeah, and I bet you went to a private doctor with it, didn’t you?50

By far the most political of any episodes, the BBC’s audience survey showed that despite a few reservations most viewers liked ‘Poetic Justice’ for being so intelligent: Whilst some disliked the confrontation between Fletcher and the judge who committed him, considering the situation ‘contrived’ and the resulting conversations ‘too philosophical’ to be really amusing, the large majority thoroughly approved of this ‘unconventional plot’, some particularly

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‘Don’t have no problems on your streets’: Fletcher tells Rawley why class matters.

welcoming the opportunities it offered for an inclusion of a more ‘reflective and serious’ element in the comedy. Widely recognized as extremely well written, this was felt by most viewers to be another ‘hilarious programme’ in one of the best and most intelligent comedies on television, very few actually disliking it to any degree.51

Fletcher’s two-episode encounter with his nemesis ends with Rawley being given parole. As he prepares to leave Slade with Mackay deferentially calling him ‘My lord’, Rawley admits that justice is not blind to class: ‘I now realize a lot of what you say is true. There are grave abuses of justice. There is often one law for the poor and oppressed, and another law for the rich and powerful. And the poor usually suffer while the rich get off with clever lawyers. I shall remember that lesson when I leave here.’ ‘Your appeal came through?’ says a flabbergasted Fletch, to which Rawley’s parting words are ‘Certainly. I’m rich and powerful. I have clever lawyers.’52 In the context of class politics, Porridge should be compared to another popular sitcom of this period: Citizen Smith (BBC,

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Rawley bids farewell to Fletcher’s men after his appeal comes through.

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1977–80). Written by John Sullivan, it satirized left-wing revolutionary posturing of the post-1960s era and starred Robert Lindsay as ‘Wolfie’ Smith, an unemployed, beret and kaftan-wearing Marxist ‘urban guerilla’ from Tooting, South London, who worships Che Guevara. Wolfie’s plans for the English proletariat are never realized because he finds his fellow working classes unwilling to overthrow capitalism. Sullivan used this situation to point up the differences between traditional working-class values, aspirations and lifestyles on the one hand and those of ‘new left’ radical politics on the other. This theme – of intergenerational working-class conflict – was common to several sitcoms of the period. In Porridge the radical leftwing figure is Melvyn Bottomley – who Fletcher nicknames Dylan – ‘after that Hippie rabbit on The Magic Roundabout’. In the episode ‘A Day Out’, Fletcher groans at the thought of digging ditches with a drop out and the ever-contemptible Ives: ‘Dylan! That long-haired anarchist nurk! We’ve got a right lot here, ain’t we, for a hard day’s work? A twelve-stone weakling and the King of the Huddersfield Hippies.’ When Dylan protests that he’s not a Hippie, Fletcher retorts ‘You’re

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the nearest thing we’ve got to one. You wear an earring and you got chucked out of art school for writing on the walls, and you’re the only one here what’s tie-dyed their prison uniform.’53 His contempt for radicals who champion the working classes without doing much work themselves is ironic given his own lack of a work ethic. But Fletcher’s innate social conservatism helped to broaden his appeal and establish Porridge as one of Britain’s favourite comedies. As Mary Malone, the Daily Mirror’s TV critic pointed out, ‘He’s no trendy. He’s square.’54 Shaun Usher in the Daily Mail agreed, describing him as ‘Caustic, lagubrious, a kind of High Tory anarchist in spirit, [Barker] creates a man I’ve encountered at many a used car lot, or all-night caff.’55 Time and again Fletcher condemns the sexual permissivenes of the age; the closest he’s ever come to radical politics was, he points out, shagging his wife Isobel on Marx’s tomb in Highgate Cemetery.56 He’s also contemptuous of the ‘caring professions’ old and new, from clergy to psychiatrists, who are employed by the state in a half-hearted attempt to turn criminals into citizens. ‘Most people never give [religion] a second thought, do they?’ he tells Godber one night after lock up, ‘when things are going well, ticking along with scant regard for the ten commandments. Stealing, committing adultery, coveting each other’s oxes. Then, wallop. In the face of adversity (in a cringing falsetto) “Please God, please help your loyal and trusted servant”. Huh!’ Godber shares this aspect of Fletcher’s cynicism: ‘I prayed when I was up in Juvenile Court and when Aston Villa had a cup run,’ he says, ‘but I became disillusioned with religion. I got probation and Villa got knocked out by Rotherham one– nothing.’57 Their view of an indifferent or non-existent God ignoring the prayers of part-time believers and downright hypocrites chimed with viewers. Britain was fast becoming one of the most secular countries in the developed world in the 1960s and 70s, with rates of church attendance falling to below 10 per cent of the population (compared

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Fletcher prays for a moment’s peace from do-gooders, while the chaplain looks on.

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to over 40 per cent in the United States). Whereas in the United States, priests and rabbis mostly retained their social status on screen, in Britain they were routinely mocked. Examples abound in sitcom alone – like the effete and pompously self-serving Revd. Timothy Farthing in Dad’s Army or the nice but ineffectual do-gooder in the more recent Rev (BBC2, 2010–14). The Slade Prison chaplain, played by Tony Aitken, is mocked for being a drinker and when he stops by Fletcher’s cell for a chat one afternoon wearing a benevolent smile, in the episode ‘No Peace For The Wicked’, Fletcher throws him out of the cell and over the balcony to the floor below, putting the vicar into shock and him into solitary confinement (a punishment he accepts with pleasure since the whole episode revolves around the paucity of privacy in jail). Here too, Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is instructive. ‘As a result of [the] new restraint’ in the modern penal system, he wrote: A whole army of technicians took over from the executioner, the immediate anatomist of pain: warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, psychologists,

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educationalists; by their very presence near the prisoner, they sing the praises that the law needs: they reassure it that the body and pain are not the ultimate objects of its punitive action.58

Fletcher’s view of ‘this whole army of technicians’ is the one thing he has in common with the man at the top of the class hierachy in Slade Prison, Governor Geoffrey Venables. When, for example, Barrowclough reports that the prison psychiatrist thinks Fletcher is ‘overcompensating for the traumatic shock of –’ Venables just cuts him off with: ‘Oh don’t spout that university claptrap at me. Young Gillespie – what does he know? These lads come in here with no experience of life. How can they have? Not two minutes ago they were in rag parades, blowing clarinets and throwing flour bags at old ladies.’59 Although Fletcher and Venables rarely exchange such views face to face, the moral perspective they share cuts across the class divide in Porridge. And yet neither man is a reactionary. They may have no time for drop-outs or ‘do-gooders’ but that’s largely because they see them as ineffective rather than dangerous. Fletcher is not a radical trendy like Wolfie Smith; but unlike Alf Garnett he embraces the marginalized minorities who are overrepresented in prison. He is, as the Observer called him, an ‘Inmate for All Seasons’.60 Although the relationship between class and power lies at the heart of Porridge, Clement and La Frenais used the show’s setting to examine other relationships like race and sexuality. By doing so, they shone more light on the state of a troubled nation: namely, that the volatility of 1970s Britain was not just due to class conflict and the economic recession, but also due to the bitterly contested legacy of civil rights and personal freedom left by the 1960s.

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3  ‘Men Without Women’: Sex and family in Porridge Women are largely absent from Porridge except for the rarely glimpsed governor’s secretary, a visiting social worker, and the topless ‘Page 3 girls’ of Fletcher’s Sun newspaper. On the surface, it seems oldfashioned. But the absence of women in Porridge gave viewers another authentic sense of prison life. Porridge appeared at a time when sexism was rife but progress was afoot. Women were routinely objectified and patronized while also gaining better access to education and careers, thanks to liberal legislation between 1967 and 1975, which included contraception and employment rights. As a result of rising female incomes and declining moral stigmas, non-marital cohabitation also became the norm.1 All these trends were reflected in situation comedies such as Carla Lane’s The Liver Birds (BBC, 1969–79). Charting the lives of two independent, aspirational women sharing a flat together in Liverpool, it was a counterpoint to the friendship that Clement and La Frenais portrayed in The Likely Lads. Sydney Lotterby, the producer of both Porridge and The Liver Birds recalled the limits of the time: ‘We weren’t allowed to talk about the pill, which was quite ridiculous,

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I mean it was happening.’2 More daringly, Man About The House (ITV, 1973–6) featured two single women sharing a flat with a single man. Sitcoms still rooted in married life also reflected change – specifically, women’s higher mental, emotional and sexual expectations of a modern, ‘companionate’ marriage at a time when the divorce rate was soaring (due largely to women escaping unhappy unions). Examples are Bob’s wife, Thelma, in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? and Tom’s wife Barbara in The Good Life (BBC, 1975–8). Both are shown to be every bit the equal of husbands and in Tom’s case he is not threatened by Barbara but lovingly embraces her aspirations (whereas Bob is torn between Thelma’s modern view of relationships and Terry’s more traditional view of them). Porridge was part of that reconfiguration of family-based sitcom between the 1970s and 90s. Acted without the macho bravado that accompanies the romanticization of crime, the prisoners’ criminality is explained, though never justified, by their social background, and they are humanized by depictions of their frailty. Norman Stanley Fletcher may see prison as ‘an occupational hazard’ but, as Phil Wickham has pointed out, ‘his cohorts are the underdogs of society; either black, gay, illiterate or just young and vulnerable, like cell-mate Lennie Godber’.3 Like gangs outside, they deal with the pain of incarceration by functioning as an alternative family, protecting each other emotionally and physically from other prisoners and from prison officers.4 In their perpetual war against authority, they also form a little platoon of which Fletcher is captain. However, unlike Captain Mainwaring’s platoon in Dad’s Army they are not eccentric stalwarts of the British nation but misfits on the margins of national life, now physically set apart from it by being jailed. The common enemy is Mr Mackay not Hitler, and yet such was the depth of their characters that Clement and La Frenais succeeded in making millions empathize with Godber, MacLaren, Lukewarm and Warren as much as they did with Pike, Godfrey, Jones and Frazer.

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Porridge showed that prisoners have domestic lives like the rest of us – relationships on the outside that sustain them on the inside, shaping their identities and behaviour until their release. The characters often refer to wives and girlfriends, sharing stories of how they met and fell in love. Godber tells how he met his fiancée Denise in a supermarket in Birmingham’s Bullring, while she was stamping ‘Special Offer’ on jars of pickled onions. The gulf between the caricature of a heartless criminal and the reality of a sentient individual is shown when Godber tries to contact Denise by writing to BBC Radio 1 with a request. When the song isn’t played on the ‘Hello Young Lovers’ slot, Fletcher points out that it’s likely been refused because he’s a prisoner: GODBER It’s a disgrace. We have a rotten enough life in here without having our requests refused. That’s discrimination that is. And five stamps up the spout. FLETCHER You can see it from their point of view. The public what pay their radio licence faithful every year – take offence, wouldn’t they? Sitting down to Sunday lunch with their beloved Family Favourites. Suddenly they read out a card with a Parkhurst postmark. Says ‘Could Tommy “Mad Dog” Hollister please have Clair de Lune.’5

Godber’s role as a surrogate son enables Fletcher to offer parental guidance at a time when he’s separated from his biological family. For example, when Godber gets into a fight one day in the kitchens he reminds the young man that ‘your hitherto blameless record is due in no small part to yours truly. I’m just the bloke who showed you the ropes, helped you get by, kept you on the rails, loaned you his soft toilet paper.’6 Godber acknowledges this: ‘I’ve never pretended to be cool or off-hand about doing stir. It bleeding petrified me. But you made it tolerable, you taught me the right approach. In me head. I get by now. Just, but I get by. I’m grateful, very grateful.’7

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Fletcher’s mentoring of Godber acquired real depth in the most acclaimed episode, ‘A Night In’. A two-hander with the qualities of a stage play, it contrasted with ‘A Day Out’, the only episode in which they leave Slade, to dig roads. Dick Clement said, ‘There was one duff episode in the first series which is where they go out for the day and the quintessential thing about Porridge is that you are locked up; that’s why we thought well let’s face this head-on and do one episode entirely set in the cell. And that’s one of the ones I’m most proud of because it’s enormously confining. And that was much more quintessential Porridge.’8 With 698 days of his sentence to go, Godber confides his anxiety as they lie in their bunks, the prison echoing with the sound of cell doors being slammed shut at 7.45 pm – around the time that viewers were watching the show, a fact that would have made them value their liberty and feel for the two men denied theirs: GODBER This is the bit I can’t stand though. FLETCHER What? 64

GODBER Lock-up. It’s only quarter-to-eight. Barely dark. If I was at home now I’d just be going out for the evening. FLETCHER That’s the point you see, son. We’re here to be punished, ain’t we? Deprived of all our creature comforts. And the little things you’ve been taking for granted all these years. Like a comfy shirt, decent smoke, a night out. GODBER A night out … FLETCHER Look, if you’re so keen we’ll go out. We could find a couple of girls … arrange to meet them in some dimly lit Italiano restaurant. Then we could go on somewhere if you like. Some night club … dance till dawn. Then back to their luxury penthouse, and wallop. But you see I done all that last night so I’m a bit knackered. Also we’d have to get all ponced up and you’d have to darn me socks. So why don’t we just have a quiet night in? All right? GODBER If you say so, Fletch.9

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Fletcher helps Godber deal with being locked up at night.

After an evening spent discussing life and liberty in the darkened silence, the prison is woken at 6.00 am to the sound of cell doors opening and officers shouting. A man capable of expressing his emotions, Godber thanks his taciturn cellmate: ‘When that door’s locked I am depressed and afraid, and you – you know – just make it a bit more tolerable.’10 Fletcher replies with a lesson for the 698 days to follow: FLETCHER You’ll get used to it, Len. And the night’s not so long is it? It’s your human spirit, see. They can’t break that, those nurks. We’ll be all right you and me, son. Here, we’ll go out tonight if you like. […] GODBER See how I feel. On the other hand, Fletch – FLETCHER Yeah. GODBER If we don’t feel like it, we might just have a quiet night in.

Their relationship differs from that of Albert and Harold Steptoe. Whereas Steptoe and Son revolved around the aspirational Harold feeling trapped in his biological father’s rag and bone business,

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Godber is literally trapped in a cell. Yet he chooses to let Fletcher be a surrogate father because he needs the older man to protect and tutor him. There’s also a quasi-marital aspect to their relationship that’s common to male comedy duos, from Morecambe and Wise to Mark and Jez in Peep Show, but which is more pronounced because of their incarceration. The two men bicker constantly about little things like darning socks and using loo roll. Beckinsale’s real wife, Judy observed: ‘It’s because they’re dealing with domestic situations all the time; they banter about “Well I gave that to you” and “I did that for you”; it’s delicious stuff, really delicious.’11 Like Beckinsale’s other comedy roles in The Lovers (1970–1) and Rising Damp (1974–7) Godber was a sensitive, aspirational working-class man who not only uses his time in prison to sit exams but also learns to cook. He takes pride in his attempts to provide decent meals for prisoners as a chef in Slade’s kitchen – a domestic activity then seen as woman’s work. Like Bob Ferris in The Likely Lads, Godber represents an alternative masculinity that was slowly emerging in Britain, and which helped to make a naturally maledominated show popular with female viewers. More controversially, drugs were becoming an issue in the penal system when Porridge was launched. Drug-related offences rose from the mid-1960s onwards as prohibition failed to contain consumption. As a result, the world’s prison population grew dramatically and jails became rife with illegal drugs, as visiting friends and families became adept at smuggling them in to alleviate prisoners’ boredom, frustration and depression. The issue was alluded to on a few occasions – for example, in the 1976 Christmas Special, ‘The Desperate Hours’, Mackay discusses it with the Governor of Slade: ‘Christmas’, he tells Venables, ‘is so open to abuse. Contraband, bartering, smuggling. There isn’t a Christmas cake comes in that isn’t laced with marijuana … I’ve taken precautions, sir. I’ve put Mr Barrowclough on to sampling all food parcels.’ ‘Has he

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anything to report?’, asks Venables, to which Mackay replies, ‘He’s still too stoned to tell me, sir.’12 The issue was fully confronted once, in the episode ‘A Storm in a Teacup’ when Grouty’s trade in drugs, stolen from the prison dispensary, is threatened by an inventory. ‘Don’t know what he wants with pills,’ remarks Godber naïvely; Fletcher replies ‘Oh come on. You know the racket in here. Always someone who wants to be picked up or zonked out. Inside’s same as outside, ’innit? Can’t see it meself. Not my cup of tea, drugs.’13 It’s a deliberately ironic comment because, later on, pills are mistakenly dropped into Fletcher’s cup of tea, causing him to pass out. The writers’ sparse treatment of drug taking contrasted with an activity that’s less common in prison but one that’s always been at the heart of comedy: sex. The absence of women is felt as part of the emotional hardship of prison life and that helped audiences to empathize with the characters because everyone experiences separation from a loved one. Similarly, the common fear of infidelity and abandonment is worse for men in prison. Both issues were explored in the episode ‘Men Without Women’ when Fletcher reads and writes letters for illiterate prisoners in return for a small fee. This was another accurate reflection of prison life because almost half of Britain’s inmates were (and still are) illiterate.14 The main beneficiary is ‘Bunny’ Warren, a loyal member of Fletcher’s little platoon.15 Played by Sam Kelly, he’s a dyslexic thief from Bolton who got caught because he couldn’t read a ‘burglar alarm’ sign. Warren’s illiteracy is used to comic effect when Fletcher reads a letter from his wife, Elaine with the wrong emphasis: ‘It just says “I wish you were here. Oh well, I must stop and get on my lover …” (Warren looks alarmed) Oh, “must stop and get on, my lover”.’ Later, when Godber learns that Denise has broken off their engagement and married an engineer in the merchant navy, Fletcher offers a crumb of comfort: ‘least your Denise has been honest enough to write a letter. ’Cos they’re all at it like knives while we’re in here.’16 Absent women are also used to subvert power relations in Porridge. Taunting officers that someone is sleeping with their wife

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Fletcher explains the purpose of ‘thinking’ to Warren in the prison yard.

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while they’re on duty is an old prison joke that’s repeated throughout the show, and it’s embellished by Fletcher when he suggests that Mackay’s military self-discipline is the source of a life lived cold: MACKAY My wife has never had any desire other than to be by my side … Seventeen years of domestic contentment. FLETCHER Er – Mr Mackay – drill sergeant was it? MACKAY That’s right Fletcher, drill sergeant. FLETCHER Do everything by numbers, did you? … Even with your old lady. Numbers is it? (in a Scottish accent) ‘Marie, I am about to make passionate love to you – stand by your bed. Wait for it! Wait for it! Knickers down – two, three!’17

It’s one of the few occasions when Mackay loses his temper. The most effective subversion of power in this context is the running joke that Barrowclough is in a miserable marriage while Fletcher, despite being separated from his wife, is in a happy one. Here is another parallel with Dad’s Army: one of the ways that Croft and Perry subverted the

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social order was that Sergeant Wilson enjoyed a better domestic life than Captain Mainwaring – even though Wilson’s relationship was an illicit one with a working-class widow, Mavis Pike. And, like Mrs Mainwaring in Dad’s Army, we never see Mrs Barrowclough – as Brian Wilde commented ‘it was left to the audience to use their imagination about what she looked like. To have shown her would have ruined the effect.’18 In the pilot episode, when Fletcher and Barrowclough are alone for much of the journey from London to Cumberland, the officer confides that his private life is a misery because his wife Alice hates being stuck in the countryside: My wife’s always wanted to be cosmopolitan … she sees a future of frustrated ambition stretching before her. She doesn’t like what I do or where we live. So over the years she’s grown bitter and unsettled, full of restless urges. Which have manifested themselves in various ways like bad temper, spots and sleeping with the postman.19

Fletcher dispenses marital advice in return for material favours. The inverted power relationship between the two men climaxes in ‘Men Without Women’, in one of the best exchanges between jailers and jailed in the entire show. As Barrowclough is locking them in for another night, his furrowed brow joined by an anxious sigh, he says: BARROWCLOUGH I hate this part of the job you know, Fletcher. Shutting men up, caging them in. FLETCHER Yes – it is a shame. Just when the good telly’s starting ’an all. All we ever see’s the flaming news and Town and Around. Fat lot of interest to us that is, locked in here. BARROWCLOUGH No. I’ve never got used to bolting those doors. I think of you in that little cell … and I think of me going out of here, home to my house. To my wife, who’s waiting for me …(He stops as if something’s occurred to him)

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FLETCHER What’s wrong Mr Barrowclough? BARROWCLOUGH I sometimes wish I was in here with you lot.20

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Barrowclough’s envy complements another running joke in the show: Fletcher’s view that Slade’s ill-educated inmates are better off in jail with an economic recession going on outside. Similarly, Barrowclough’s marriage is used to suggest that their emotional and sexual frustration is preferable to the misery of domestic life with an unfaithful wife. Slade’s inmates deal with sexual deprivation by fantasizing about sex with celebrities or they obtain fleeting sexual thrills from the occasional sight of a female prison official. ‘Gruesome Glenda’, the social worker who visits on Tuesdays, is dismissed by Fletcher as ‘her with the brogues and the bicycle. You’d be hard pushed to have an erotic fantasy about that one’ (although it doesn’t stop another inmate stealing her bike saddle for reasons left to viewers’ imaginations).21 Two things alleviate the men’s urges: a drug called bromide routinely placed in prisoners’ drinks to reduce their sex drive and, of A cuckolded Barrowclough tells Fletcher ‘wish I was in here with you lot’ before returning to his wife.

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course, masturbation. As Erwin James noted in his prison memoir, ‘Long hours spent in confinement without the succor of human warmth serve only to intensify the sense of carnal deprivation. The landings of longterm prisons are littered with wan individuals, hollow-eyed through years of unrestrained masturbation. Pathetic perhaps, but for those unable to master their instincts there are few options available through which to gain relief from the torment of Priapus.’22 Masturbation is mentioned during ‘A Night In’, briefly alarming Fletcher: GODBER D’you know what I’ve found useful since I’ve been inside? I’ve started to do something which I haven’t done since I was a kiddy. I find it helps. D’you know what I do? FLETCHER I shudder to think, son. GODBER I pray.23

The erotic imagining of unattainable women is an integral part of the men’s lives, which enabled law-abiding viewers to relate to the fictional felons they were watching – the erotic imagining of the jailed being a more deprived version of daily life for many people. The prisoners also use pulp fiction for stimulation, especially stories with ‘exotic’ settings where men are dominant – for example, when Godber borrows a book from his cellmate and says ‘That’s a good scene, that is, where the plantation owner gets hold of the nubile young slave girl behind the cotton gin’ (an allusion that wouldn’t make the cut in an age more sensitive to slavery).24 Prisoners’ use of pornography also appears in the episode ‘No Peace for the Wicked’, when three Home Office inspectors visit Fletcher’s cell during a tour to check on conditions in the jail. Mackay proudly tells the female inspector ‘Prisoners are allowed of course to personalize their cells … they’re allowed to decorate their lockers with mementoes of family and home,’ at which point he opens the locker door to reveal several nude photos of busty young women pinned up inside. ‘Those two are the wife and that’s the wife’s sister,’ Fletcher drily remarks to the disapproving woman.25

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‘Those two are the wife’: Fletcher shows his ‘family photos’ to a prison inspector.

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Dramatic links between a man’s domestic life and his crime ‘family’ was a feature of the American gangster film that reached its apogee on screen with The Godfather (1972) and on TV with The Sopranos (1999–2007). In Porridge, family life isn’t the backdrop to a more glamorous, sexual and violent life but instead is used to explain why for some men, crime seems to be the only way they can provide for their families. For example, when Fletcher announces that his son Raymond has got into an elite school: Yes, lovely school. Costs a bit, you know. Books, equipment. But when my son showed up first day he was short of nothing. Rugby boots, blazer, scarf, the lot. Now, he wouldn’t have had all that if his dad had been a struggling clerk or a shoe repairer. No. The reason he had all that was that his dad robbed a school outfitters.26

Yet Fletcher is openly remorseful about the impact on his family, which was literally born into crime: his three children are aged fourteen, nineteen and twenty-four – a five-year gap between each one due to

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regular imprisonment. ‘A father’s place is at home, with his kids – giving them affection, parental guidance,’ he admits to Godber.27 In ‘Men Without Women’, Fletcher swings a weekend’s compassionate parole with his family in North London by pretending that his wife is about to leave him for a younger man. In the only episode that we see Isobel (played by June Ellis) he watches Spurs play, goes to the pub, enjoys a Sunday roast, and above all he savours a few hours’ companionship and sex with his beloved Isobel. Sitting contentedly in front of the TV, he rues the fact that while he’s a father figure to fellow prisoners, a life of crime has kept him away from his real family: I’ve had me fill of porridge. It’s full of kids these days. Talk about a generation gap. Father figure I am. No it’s been a mug’s game my life. And seein’ the kids, and realizing I’m missing them growing up … and all the things this weekend gave me. I tell you … the best things in life ain’t free. But the best thing in life is bein’ free.28 73 Fletcher embraces his wife Isobel while Ingrid looks on, beginning his weekend parole.

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Although the spouses of Mackay and Barrowclough are never seen, prisoners’ wives and mothers appeared in two episodes when they visited Slade. On a coach ride from the rail station to the jail, they discuss how difficult it is to get to rural Cumberland. One wife, Norma, says to another, ‘It’s us that suffers chuck. Us that has to cope with no money and a family to run, and no man around the house.’29 Briefly, we are taken into the world of women without men. Their visits aren’t always beneficial. Godber’s mother never has anything of interest or encouragement to say to him and when Fletch points this out she says, ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I can never think of what to say to him. It’s like visiting people in hospital.’30 Fletcher’s insouciant, gum-chewing daughter, Ingrid, is never short of words and her visit is used to show how sex-starved prisoners are. As all the men stare at her, sick with lust, she proudly announces that she can dispense with a bra because ‘my breasts are firm and pliant’. Her dad reminds her that ‘there’s six hundred men in here would go berserk at a glimpse of shin, never mind unfettered knockers’.31 ‘It’s us that suffers chuck.’ Prisoners’ wives make the long journey to Slade on visiting day.

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Ingrid explains the importance of women’s liberation to her father.

But Ingrid is not just there as eye candy for inmates and viewers – a ‘tart with a heart’ according to the official Series Guide.32 Her main role is to show that Fletcher has left a family behind: she brings news of how Isobel, his other daughter Marion, and his son Raymond are all muddling along in his absence. Ingrid, a hairdresser, lives at home while Marion (the only family member who’s never seen) works in a chemist and shares a flat with nurses. Unaware that Ingrid is about to start a relationship with Godber after their eyes meet in the visiting room, Fletcher warns her about dating criminals and he frets about the sexual freedom his daughters enjoy. He wants them to get married, but when he derides Ingrid for being a ‘spinster’ she replies: INGRID Oh Dad, thing’s have changed since your day … Lots of girls don’t want to be tied down so quick. They feel there’s alternatives to marriage. FLETCHER Not in Muswell Hill they don’t. Nothing’s changed there. INGRID They’ve twinned the Odeon.

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FLETCHER I’m talking about standards, moral standards. All these social commentators – they don’t know Britain. They all live within a stone’s throw of each other in North West One. They ain’t never been north of Hampstead or south of Sloane Square. But in the real world – Birmingham, Bristol, Muswell Hill – the fundamentals haven’t changed – here, are you wearing a bra?33

Ingrid’s refusal to get married and her refusal to wear a bra (then a symbol of female liberation) both form part of her identity as a modern woman. Patricia Brake, the actor who played Ingrid, remembers: ‘you know forty years ago nobody appeared on television without a bra. And they decided that my nipples didn’t look good enough so they actually put bits of plasticine on the end just to make them look better in the T-shirt.’34 The ‘need’ for plastic breast enhancement may show how slowly attitudes to women were changing, but attitudes to sex were changing fast. Opposition to sex before marriage plummeted: the 76 Godber gazes at Ingrid’s ‘unfettered knockers’.

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number of Britons who thought it was immoral fell from 66 per cent of the population in 1963 to just 10 per cent in 1973.35 One of the pivots of situation comedy in the 1960s and 70s was this gulf in generational attitudes to sex and, although Fletcher is no prude, he is typical of those struggling to come to terms with a more liberal sexual culture. Women’s roles were more substantial in the spin-off Going Straight when Fletcher leaves prison and returns home to his real family. In the meantime, Porridge addressed an even more controversial subject: homosexuality. Although many viewers were aware that prisons were rife with gay activity of various kinds, earlier prison dramas avoided the subject except to make the odd allusion to it for comic effect. Clement and La Frenais met the subject head on.

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4  ‘Ways and Means’: Sexuality, race and nation in Porridge The cosmopolitan bent of Porridge was typical of situation comedies in that most have urban or suburban settings. As Victoria Wood once said ‘There’s no comedy in scenery.’1 There are exceptions: Roy Clarke’s Last of the Summer Wine, set in Yorkshire about a gang of infantile old men, and Richard Curtis’s The Vicar of Dibley (BBC1, 1994–2007), set in an Oxfordshire village struggling to accommodate its first female vicar and her liberal views. In most sitcoms, however, the tensions between tradition and modernity are played out for comic effect in the nexus of modern life: the city. Porridge is unusual because its characters are trapped in the countryside against their will. Like most British people they’re from towns or cities and are locked up in a place Mackay gleefully describes as ‘a barren windswept fell north of the Pennines’.2 That rural setting emphasizes how remote Slade’s inmates are from friends, family and civilization, with all its excitements, pleasures and comforts. On the few occasions they go outside on a works party the countryside is shown to be a cold, damp, dark and inhospitable place populated by livestock and the odd farmer, publican or vicar. ‘My wife’s always wanted to be cosmopolitan’ is, after all, Barrowclough’s explanation for her infidelity in the place his job has brought her to.

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Fletcher’s men, including Dylan the Hippie (fourth from left) digging ditches in ‘A Day Out’. 80

Fletcher enjoys a pint in the village pub after escaping the works party for an hour.

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But Porridge did more than poke fun at rurality. It undermined stereotypes of minorities that were then prevalent in British comedy, and which reflected how much the so-called ‘permissive society’ was contested on generational lines. First broadcast just seven years after the Sexual Offences Act decriminalized gay sex in 1967 in England and Wales, it was contemporaneous with the flamboyant ‘gender bending’ of Glam Rock, led by an openly bisexual David Bowie. Porridge was also broadcast soon after the 1968 Race Relations Act that criminalized racial discrimination and at a time when reggae, Britain’s first homegrown black youth culture, was fostering deeper connections between people of different races. Like Alf Garnett and Albert Steptoe, Fletcher is generally contemptuous of the permissive society; but unlike them he is also open-minded and tolerant of minorities. This pushed Porridge ahead of its time. Looking back in one interview Dick Clement said: We thought we should have someone gay inside Slade Prison because it reflected the reality. I have heard recently that one or two people thought some of our remarks were not appropriate now, in a more politically sensitive era. But I dispute that because we wanted to cover the fact that there are gay people inside prisons. Fletcher’s attitude to them was one of complete tolerance and to me that was more important – to show him being completely accepting and tolerant.3

The show’s main homosexual character, ‘Lukewarm’, was played by Christopher Biggins. Born in 1948, and openly gay after his marriage to a woman ended in 1974, Biggins had previously appeared in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? as Bob and Terry’s friend Podge Rowley. Lukewarm was a trusted member of Fletcher’s surrogate family: sometimes the source, but never the object of humour. In the episode ‘Men Without Women’, his sexuality is made explicit during the men’s discussion about a forthcoming visiting day. Lukewarm tells them that his boyfriend Trevor – a watch repairer from Stockport – is closing his shop for the day to make the journey. Fletcher observes:

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Lukewarm reads a letter from his boyfriend Trevor.

Course Lukewarm’s got a different sort of problem from the rest of you. His Trevor’s the insecure one, isn’t he? I mean there’s six hundred men in here. So whereas you’re all worried what your wives are up to on the outside, 82

Trevor’s worried what Lukewarm’s up to on the inside.4

Biggins remembers the live response: ‘when the audience suddenly realized the character called Trevor was Lukewarm’s boyfriend, there was an almighty roar. It was probably the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard in a studio.’5 What were they laughing at? Possibly the comedic juxtaposition between prisoners’ acceptance of Lukewarm and the fact that most of society regarded homosexuals as immoral; the audience was not, it seems, laughing at the idea of being gay in the first place. It is the actual difference in Lukewarm’s sexual orientation rather than a presumed moral deviance that Clement and La Frenais employ as a comic device. Sent to prison for shoplifting, like most other prisoners his crime is not a sexual one. He is therefore free to invite empathy and admiration as a member of Fletcher’s platoon – for example when he participates in a secret gambling session in

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Lukewarm and Godber discuss food in the prison kitchen. 83

‘The Hustler’ episode. To the men’s delight, he makes sandwiches for them all, prompting this remark from Fletcher: ‘Thanks Lukewarm – you spoil us. I wish I’d had a mother like you. I might have gone straight.’6 The moral outsider in this drama is not Lukewarm but Ives, the Liverpudlian with no sense of honour among thieves (‘horrible Ives’ as he’s known). Excluded from the gambling session, Ives bets Fletcher they’ll be caught then tells Mackay where they’re gambling in order to collect his bet and curry favour with prison officers. Far more than in the United States, ‘camp’ had been a feature of pre-war comedy in stage shows, which found its way onto British radio and television in the mid-twentieth century. Camp comedy made homosexuality more palatable by desexing it and by reinforcing the popular view that gay men were naturally effeminate (just as gay women were ‘naturally’ butch). Mr Humphries, the effeminate

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menswear assistant in the department store sitcom Are You Being Served? (BBC, 1972–85) produced the shrill catchphrase ‘I’m free!’ with which millions of Britons parodied what they took to be the quintessential gay man. But campness also enabled a display of sexual ambiguity that offered an outlet for alternative masculinities and sexualities – an outlet still rare on American screens in the 1970s, where machismo was central to the portrayal of American life. When asked for his definition of camp in 1968, Kenneth Williams observed: ‘To some it means that which is essentially frivolous, to others the baroque as opposed to the puritanical … and to others – a load of poofs.’7 The term ‘poof’ is used in Porridge, setting Lukewarm’s camp persona in Williams’ last category. Lukewarm is a cook in the prison kitchen – then still predominantly seen as ‘woman’s work’ – and the notion that gay men are not really men is present, for example when Lukewarm refers to a ping pong game he participates in with another gay prisoner and two straight ones as ‘Mixed doubles’.8 Early episodes also made fun of the predatory, indiscriminate ‘nature’ of gay prisoners, then a common source of anxiety about homosexuals. At their induction Fletcher warns Godber to ‘watch out for the bath-house cleaners’ because ‘a lot of poofs work the bathhouse’. Once installed in their cell together he warns, ‘Harm can come to a growing lad … You’re the one could drive the fairies round here into a frenzy.’ When Godber protests that he’s engaged to Denise, Fletcher replies ‘Means naff all to them, my son. They’re all engaged to each other.’9 As Andy Medhurst observes in his study of English comedy, ‘humour thrives at flashpoints of cultural nervousness’, so that jokes about homosexuality are frequent in ‘homosocial’ comedies that have a close male relationship at their core. These jokes are made ‘to draw a firm line between “us” (straight men who are devoted to each other) and “them” (queer men who have sex with each other).’10 Although these ‘flashpoints’ do occur in Porridge, Lukewarm is distinguished from other gay men in the show by not being predatory. He’s in a settled romantic relationship, which his fellow inmates

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Trevor reads a letter from Lukewarm on his way to Slade with prisoners’ wives.

accept without question as a legitimate and serious one that parallels their own. When Trevor alights from the visitors’ bus with wives and girlfriends and is seen chatting to his partner in the visiting room no one stares, mutters or giggles. Lukewarm’s quasi-marital relationship with Trevor, who is not in prison, perhaps enabled viewers to avoid the issue of same-sex relationships in prison, where men without women sometimes use each other as substitutes for heterosexual physical gratification and emotional comfort. Yet his fidelity to Trevor was also a conscious strategy of normalization by the writers. They are retrospectively ambivalent about Lukewarm. On the one hand Ian La Frenais admits to unease about the way they initially used him for laughs: One of the doubts Dick and I had was about the gay character … we probably never felt quite comfortable with that. Fletcher makes a few comments that seem quite homophobic in retrospect. At the time it was an issue that seemed quite harmless, if we had done the series twenty years later you just wouldn’t have gone there … There was a bit of criticism

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about the homophobic attitude, much more than the issue about trivializing or romanticizing prisons; there was a bit of flack about him being a stereotypical gay – maybe it came from Gay News who interviewed me. They were thinking that maybe me and Dick were gay because we had done so many programmes about men in captivity.11

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On the other hand, La Frenais feels that Lukewarm became more progressive as the show went on because ‘[the other prisoners] just accept him for who he is’.12 Christopher Biggins also prevented his character turning into a caricature. ‘None of us wanted him to be a mincing queen,’ said Biggins, ‘so it was played, basically, a bit like me. For example, I used to do knitting so I suggested the character should knit, which helped make him a little fey.’13 When the show ended, a decade after the decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales, a Gallup poll in 1977 revealed a softening of British attitudes. Although the majority felt that homosexuals should be hired as sales staff or in the armed forces, the majority were also opposed to them becoming junior schoolteachers, doctors or prison officers – findings which showed a continuing belief that gay people are more predatory and should therefore be kept away from professions in which they could exercise power over others. Two in five of Gallup’s respondents thought there were more homosexuals in Britain than there had been twenty-five years earlier – reflecting a widespread belief that sexuality was a lifestyle choice that could be propagated through politics and pop culture. However, on the key question of whether gay sex should be legal between consenting adults, there was now a clear majority of three in five Britons – up from two in five in 1967.14 Therefore, while still confined by contemporary mores, it can be said that Porridge was one of the few TV shows of its time that reflected a steady shift in British attitudes towards sexuality. During a re-run of the show in 2007, the BBC cut out a reference to Lukewarm stereotypically keeping his cell immaculate, with Fletcher

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remarking ‘that sort do, don’t they?’ This led to accusations of political correctness from some fans. Biggins sprang to the show’s defence, saying ‘It was always so well done, the gay thing. Very sensitively handled.’15 The subject of race was also sensitively handled, offering a more progressive view of black people than was usual in British comedy at the time. Black Britons became a presence on TV screens as early as the 1950s but with more frequency in the 1970s, when the children born to mid-century Commonwealth immigrants reached adulthood, creating for the first time a substantial generation of British born Afro-Caribbean and Asian youths. Usually, characters of colour were represented as social problems in drama or else they were the butt of racist humour and crude stereotyping. Sitcoms such as Love Thy Neighbour (ITV, 1972–6), about a black couple moving next door to a white couple, routinely bandied around words like ‘honky’ and ‘sambo’ as the two husbands traded insults with each other, while their less bigoted wives looked on. The show’s writer, Vince Powell (1928–2009), defended Love Thy Neighbour on the grounds that by airing ‘banter’ it both reflected contemporary Britain and acted as a pressure valve – one that was sealed off by ‘political correctness’. Fans dismissed evidence that ethnic minorities detested these shows; and they protested when Michael Grade (the son of Jewish immigrants) cancelled another Powell favourite, Mind Your Language (LWT, 1977–9; 1986). Grade’s uncle, Lew, would later finance the film version of Porridge. By using racial difference as a comedic vehicle Porridge was of its time; but it was one of the few sitcoms to do so in a way that subverted the racial stereotypes that were then so prevalent in public discourse. One of Fletcher’s allies is Jim McLaren, played by Tony Osoba (b.1947). A middle-class, mixed-race Scot whose father was Nigerian, Osoba trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama. His character is an angry working-class Glaswegian orphan,

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always in trouble with prison officers for violent behaviour. Osoba told the author: There were occasional references to race but it only came from Fletcher, and rather than be racist they would be nationalistic, a Scottish reference. So these differences in character, whether it’s ethnicity or sexual proclivity, whatever it is, didn’t matter to Fletcher, he’d embrace anyone. If he had an eye on anything it was not who people are or what they did it was ‘how can I benefit from this’? You can’t see how any likely alliances or friendships would build up in any other walk of life; but somehow you’re all confined together and then suddenly you realize ‘it’s us against the system rather than me against you’ and so the common enemy becomes the prison system – the governor, the warders.16

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McLaren became a regular in the show’s second and third series after starring in the episode ‘Ways and Means’, in which Fletcher persuades him to mount a fake rooftop protest so that he can pretend to talk McLaren down, thus earning the Governor’s approval for both men. The plan is hatched when the old lag counsels the young Scot to contain his anger and direct his energy into getting parole instead of more solitary confinement – a scene that culminates with the inversion of stereotypes noted by Tony Osoba: Sit down, sit down. I know things ain’t easy for you. Being black with a Scottish father. I mean, it’s an unfortunate mixture. It’s the Scottish side what brings out all that aggression in you … I mean it subdues your basic West Indian personality. Which is one of exuberant high spirits. All them steel bands and carnivals, like. Lordy Lordy bit. Someone just has to score a boundary in a test match and they have a firework display.17

Of course, it could be argued that the writers merely replaced one stereotype of latent black aggression with another of wide-eyed minstrelsy (the cricketers and fans to whom Fletcher alludes were

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Fletcher ends McLaren’s ‘rooftop protest’.

caricatured in both those ways by a British media trying to explain the West Indies ‘beating England at their own game’ in the 1970s and 80s).18 Yet, Clement and La Frenais did succeed in de-racializing McLaren’s character by ascribing latent aggression not to West Indians but to the Scots – England’s main partners in the brutal exploitation of Caribbean slave colonies. Slavery is mentioned once in relation to McLaren, when he finds Fletcher reading a copy of the best-selling novel Mandingo set in the antebellum South, which had recently been made into a film.19 When he says ‘It’s about your lot … blacks, sonny jock, blacks,’ the Scotsman points out that he’s West Indian, to which Fletcher replies: ‘All the same, slaves an’ that. This lot picked cotton. Your lot picked bananas. Comes down to the same difference. A load of blacks toiling in the fields under a boiling sun picking something.’ The point Fletcher makes, daring for sitcom of the time, is that in Britain’s African and Caribbean colonies, for black people there was no difference between British or American white supremacy. The ever-present Warren finesses

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the point by reminding them both that the Romans had white slaves ‘in galleys, rowing like’.20 From the moment that the star of the show declared that McLaren’s race (like Lukewarm’s sexuality) was secondary to his nationality, the Scotsman became a valued member of Fletcher’s little platoon of misfits. In that respect, Porridge may be compared to Eric Chappell’s contemporaneous Rising Damp (ITV, 1974–8).21 In it, the central character of Philip – an upper-class West African medical student – also subverts racial stereotyping in sparring with his landlord Rigsby. Philip challenges the idea of a primitive, hypersexual bushman with which Rigsby attempts to rationalize his jealousy of a black man who’s more educated and successful than he is. Rising Damp is the more radical of the two comedies because it explored the intersection between class and race, challenging the conventional elision (still prevalent) that assumed black people were necessarily of a lower class. Another connection with Rising Damp, is that it too starred Richard Beckinsale in a role that helped to make him a household name: Beckinsale played Philip’s roommate and fellow student, Alan – a similarly young and naïve but well-meaning Brummie who is eager to learn from his more experienced roommate, just as Godber learns from his cellmate Fletcher. Although MacLaren is neither as educated or as central to the comedy as Philip, Porridge still countered stereotypes because it dealt with race in a prison setting. In Britain as in the United States, a disproportionate number of young black males are incarcerated, largely because racism within the police force and judicial system ensure that black men are more likely to be arrested, tried and jailed for certain crimes (drug-related ones especially) than are whites. Fletcher’s mentoring of McLaren begins with the old lag expressing an understanding of the social deprivation that is a common cause of criminality. He tells Barrowclough ‘We know society’s extracting its revenge on those what never had a chance to begin with. Look at Maclaren here. Never had a chance, have you, son?’22

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Fletcher and McLaren become friends in the face of adversity.

But Fletcher mocks the professions employed to deal with the results of that deprivation. He explains to Mr Barrowclough why the prison welfare officer, Mr Gillespie, won’t be able to get McLaren down from the roof: ‘What’s he know? – the lad’s just out of university. Got no experience of the practical. He’s probably thumbing through his textbooks now. Trying to find the chapter on Negro nutters and how to deal with them.’23 In Fletcher’s bid to be allowed to end McLaren’s rooftop protest, he explains why to Slade’s governor: ‘in his mind you all represent the establishment which only inflames his feelings of hostility and persecution … You see, it’s a question of attitude, isn’t it, sir? Last thing the lad wanted was all that preaching and sermonizing.’24 Fletcher’s disdain for liberalism is also apparent when McLaren explains that being an illegitimate orphan has damaged his life as much as being mixed race. Turning the problem on its head, Fletcher counsels him that illegitimacy is becoming as ‘fashionable’ as blackness or homosexuality:

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It ain’t a stigma no more. Not these days, in these liberated times. Out of fashion, marriage is. All these glamour people, these trendsetters, your pop stars and television personalities, well all their offspring’s outta wedlock, isn’t it? Frankly, in a few years time, illegitimates is going to be fashionable figures. Like homosexuals are at the moment. In fact, being an illegitimate black poof’s about as chic as you could get.25

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MacLaren protests that he is not gay, hinting at a flaw in their rainbow coalition by challenging the idea that being part of one minority necessarily gives you an affinity with another. But on the whole, the motley crew of misfits that Fletcher commands do get on with each other and pull together for their mutual benefit, united in disdain for their common enemy, the ‘little Hitlers’ of prison authority – just as Mainwaring’s motley crew in Dad’s Army are united by their common enemy, the original Hitler. Here lies one of the strength’s of Fletcher’s character and the source of his enduring popularity in British comedy: his ability to mock prejudice while also mocking the liberal politics that gained some traction for minority rights after the 1960s. It was this ability simultaneously to ride the horses of tradition and progress that helped Porridge appeal to a broad constituency of viewers – those who were frustrated with toxic traditions and those (often the same viewers) who disliked what they felt was the ‘preaching and sermonizing’ of a liberal elite. More controversially, Fletcher shares the reactionary view that equal opportunity enables ethnic minorities to obtain privileges at the expense of the white majority. At their induction he tells Godber to pick a religion in order to get special treatment. Expressing the nonchalant indifference of the secular majority in modern Britain, Godber says ‘C of E, I suppose,’ which prompts this exchange: FLETCHER That’s no good. Get no perks with C of E. Whereas if you were a Sikh you could grow your hair long. Or if you were a Muslim they’d have to send in special grub from outside.

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GODBER Don’t like Chinese food. FLETCHER Muslim ain’t Chinese. GODBER What is Muslim food then? FLETCHER What? … Well it’s … it’s well, it’s more exotic than the filth you’ll eat here, otherwise the Muslims wouldn’t eat it, would they? Or you could say you were Jewish. Yeah, say you were Jewish. Oh no, you couldn’t get away with that, could you? Doctor’s just going to examine you. He’d spot the evidence.26

The pointed use of Scottishness throughout the sitcom – as a focus of Fletcher’s hatred of Mackay and as a counterpoint to his friendship with Maclaren – captured another issue that English viewers were becoming aware of in the 1970s: Scottish nationalism. Rivalry between the Scots and the English is as old as the countries themselves and it was a feature of other sitcoms such as Dad’s Army – in which the character of Fraser perpetuated a stereotype of the dour and pessimistic, yet canny and loyal Scotsman. Porridge was different because it confronted the fact that an historic rivalry was turning into a political crisis. It was broadcast just as Scottish nationalism was becoming a mass movement for the first time, with a growing number of Scots supporting independence from the United Kingdom and still more wanting further devolution. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which had never polled more than 5 per cent of the vote since being founded in 1934, made its breakthrough in the year that Porridge was first screened, winning 34 per cent of the vote at the British general election of autumn 1974. The main cause of the crisis was the relative economic decline of post-imperial Scotland, compounded by the economic crisis of the 1970s that was such a leitmotif of Porridge. The secularization of Britain also removed the religious compact between two once fervently Protestant nations. Fletcher’s regular digs at the officer he calls ‘that charmless Celtic nurk’ suggest that the Scots are a primitive people.27 ‘No doubt your wife, Fletcher, has told your friends you’re on a five-year safari,’

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Mackay mocks the immorality of the ‘criminal classes’.

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smirks Mackay – making fun of the fact that prisoners lie about their lengthy absence from civil society. He replies, ‘No, no. She tells them I’m doing missionary work in Scotland.’28 It’s another clever inversion of race and nationality, because Scottish Protestant missionaries like David Livingstone had been part of the Victorian imperial project, ‘Christianizing’ natives in Africa and elsewhere. Mackay’s power over Fletcher symbolized the fact that Scottish discontent with the Union had become more robust as well as more vocal. The SNP’s electoral success was fuelled by the discovery of North Sea Oil, which lent credence to the idea that Scotland could afford independence if the oil in its waters was kept for the Scots alone. Clement and La Frenais confronted that issue in an episode of 1975 – the year that North Sea Oil was first pumped ashore and into the British Treasury. This time, it’s Maclaren who waves the saltire in Fletcher’s face: GODBER By the time you lot get out of here there’ll be nothing worth robbing.

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FLETCHER By then Britain should be reaping the benefits of North Sea Oil. [We] can tell the A-rabs to stuff it and ‘can we please buy London back?’ MCLAREN Scottish oil. Don’t forget that. Scottish oil. FLETCHER Oh listen to the Scottish Nationalist all of a sudden. Well, well, would you believe it? A dusky Rob Roy. What tartan do you wear, the Black Watch? MCLAREN Naff off, Fletcher. FLETCHER All right so it’s Scottish oil. It’s English expertise what’ll get it out. GODBER Texan.29

It’s a smart exchange that’s capped like a burst oil well by Godber’s remark, which suggests that American multinationals actually own Britain. Another aspect of Porridge that bound Fletcher’s men together was their respect for the elderly. The generation gap in the 1970s was not only marked by subcultures such as Glam, Reggae and Punk, but also by the widely held view that youngsters no longer had any respect for authority. Throughout the world, most prisoners are young or middle-aged men (in 2013, 61 per cent in England and Wales were aged between 21 and 39 and a further 18 per cent between 40 and 49. Only 12 per cent were aged 50 or over).30 The few elderly ones tend to be those serving long sentences for more serious crimes like murder, a fact that Clement and La Frenais dealt with in the final series episode ‘Pardon Me’. A young David Jason played the elderly ‘Blanco’, a Yorkshireman who’s spent half his life in jail for murdering his wife and is now cared for by Lukewarm. When the seedy Jarvis plans to steal Blanco’s buried cash on his release Fletcher is disgusted at this lack of respect for a prison elder. So, he gives Jarvis a fake map that leads the scoundrel to dig up the pitch of Leeds United instead. When Blanco is himself released from Slade after a campaign to pardon him, the old man confesses that it was actually his wife’s lover who he murdered. But the shock doesn’t shake Fletcher’s respect for him. And

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Blanco’s pardon comes through.

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such is the viewer’s empathy for most of Slade’s prisoners that the only killer among them is tacitly forgiven his crime of passion. As well as respect for minorities and the elderly, another notable aspect of Porridge is that prison officers don’t abuse their power by making discriminatory remarks about prisoners’ racial, religious or sexual background (an opportunity that other writers like Vince Powell would not have missed). Prejudice is as common in the penal system as it is in the judicial system, and in that sense Porridge wasn’t realistic. But the fact that verbal and physical abuse is not used to wield power helped to maintain the liberal tone of the comedy, humanizing officers as well as prisoners. ‘Now laddie, don’t want you developing a chip,’ Mackay reassures Godber, ‘don’t want you to think I’m picking on you. I have a job to do. And whatever else I am, I’m firm but fair. I want you to know that I treat you all with equal contempt.’31 Clement and La Frenais highlighted this in the series two episode ‘Disturbing the Peace’. Mackay temporarily leaves Slade to go on a refresher course but just as the inmates begin plotting how

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to profit from his absence, Mackay’s replacement turns out to be the most vindictive officer they ever encounter: Mr Wainwright (played by Peter Jeffrey).32 Fletcher has encountered the man known as ‘Napper’ before, during an earlier stint in Brixton Prison, and alerts the others to what’s in store for them. Wainwright soon confirms their fears in this exchange with Maclaren: WAINWRIGHT I have this mean streak, see. I know it’s despicable but I’m prejudiced. MACLAREN That’ll make a nice change. WAINWRIGHT Sonny Jim, I’m not just prejudiced against you lot … I’m prejudiced against – (Rapid-fire) liberals, longhairs, pill-heads, winos, queens, slags, squealers, pikeys and greaseballs.33

Wainwright turns to Godber and asks, ‘Are you in there, sonny?’ to which he replies, ‘Isn’t everybody?’ – thus affirming the rainbow alliance of Fletcher’s men. Barrowclough tells his colleague that an officer’s role is to ‘encourage them in a programme of self-improvement and rehabilitation … to prepare them for going back into society’. Wainwright counters: ‘our role, Mr Barrowclough, is to keep them away from society. Our role is to keep these scheming bastards locked in.’34 Mackay also thinks Barrowclough is weak, but he does believe that a few prisoners can be rehabilitated; and though he tells Godber ‘I treat you all with equal contempt,’ his contempt is a generic moral disdain for criminals and not, like Wainwright’s, a specifically targeted set of social prejudices. After ‘Napper’ ends fraternizing in the exercise yard, shortens TV viewing time and commandeers the ping pong table for the officers’ mess, they realize that Mackay isn’t so bad after all, so Fletcher cooks up a fake prison riot against the new regime. When the nasty ‘Napper’ fails to quell the riot, a terrified Barrowclough enters the wrecked canteen and politely asks them to stop. Bizarrely, the men are suddenly quiescent and return to their cells, giving Barrowclough credit with the Governor for averting a disaster. A humiliated Wainwright is

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Fletcher is reunited with the sadistic Wainwright. 98

transferred back to Brixton and the victory appears to be one for a liberal approach to prisoners. In fact, it’s really a victory for the stern moderation that Mackay represents. When he returns to Slade, he promises a regime of ‘discipline, hard work, and blind unquestioning obedience’, concluding ‘I’M BACK AND I’M IN CHARGE HERE!’ What follows is one of the most moving scenes in the whole sitcom. Led by Fletcher and Godber, the men of Slade prison sing, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. It is Mackay – more than the prejudiced, sadistic Wainwright or the naïvely soft Barrowclough – who ultimately holds the men’s respect. Tony Osoba remembers, ‘you know that he is firm and strong but he’s not a sadist. And there’s a wonderful moment when Mackay comes back and he shouts “get back in your cells!” and as he’s strutting down [the gantry] that little refrain comes in [sings] “For he’s a jolly good fellow!” and Mackay stops and is clearly moved … it’s an exquisite moment’.35

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Wainwright retreats from rioting prisoners in the canteen.

To conclude, the moral hierarchy of Slade is based more on prisoners’ character and how they treat each other or their families and friends, than on their social background or the nature of their crimes. Even Mackay, who regards the ‘criminal classes’ as immoral, is always ‘firm but fair’ towards inmates. That’s what maintains the balance of power between rulers and ruled in prison. During an exchange between the protagonists in the episode ‘No Way Out’, Fletcher says to Mackay ‘we both know that neither of us must push the other too far … Thereby we maintain a tolerable rhythm of life. We must season our mutual contempt with mutual respect.’ ‘That’s true,’ replies the Scotsman.36 By the time that episode was broadcast on Christmas Eve 1975, an American version of Porridge was showing on TV screens in the United States. Called On The Rocks, it ran aground on fundamental differences between Britain and America. The experience was a painful one for Clement and La Frenais and it demonstrated that, for all the universal themes in world comedy, humour still reflects national cultures and the societies that shape them.

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5  On the Rocks: Porridge goes to America From Peter Sellers to Monty Python, this was a period when more British comedy crossed the Atlantic than at any time since Charlie Chaplin. Writers and comedians flew over on the back of British pop music and fashion in the 1960s and 70s. Their success helped to alter the American view of Britain, replacing the tired image of a stuffy, class-conscious island with that of a cool, sexy and culturally innovative partner. Yet the Atlantic crossing of Porridge showed that, although the two nations share a transatlantic pop culture as well as a language, the British are still more divided by class while Americans are more divided by race. The success of the world’s first prison-based sitcom caught the attention of Michael Eisner at the American Broadcasting Company, who had been responsible for Happy Days and went on to be CEO of Walt Disney. Eisner commissioned Clement and La Frenais to write twenty-four episodes of On The Rocks, which were then broadcast in two seasons between 1975 and 1976. No British writers had ever adapted their own sitcom before – a measure of the network’s faith in them. John Rich (1925–2012) took over Sydney Lotterby’s job of producing and directing the show. Rich’s other work included All in the

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Family (1971–9), the successful American version of Johnny Speight’s Till Death Us Do Part.1 ‘We still find that writing with a British voice is easier than writing with an American one,’ said Clement, ‘we like showing we’re flexible and capable of more than one style, but it’s enormously comfortable writing with a British voice.’2 That flexibility came in useful because they had to write much of Porridge and On The Rocks simultaneously while living in Los Angeles, where they settled permanently in 1976. This was because American comedy and drama seasons contain double the number of episodes, so the writers soon ran out of material from the original. ‘We were constantly translating material that had been used in the States for the UK, whereas earlier we had adapted the British scripts for the American market – it was an extraordinary situation,’ remembers La Frenais.3 On The Rocks premiered on 11 September 1975. It was set in the fictional Alamesa Minimum Security Prison in California. The main difference between Alamesa and Slade was that race was used as a substitute for class in order to make the show work. Dick Clement once said: We’re often asked about the differences between American humour and the English variety. The truth is, a good joke is a good joke. The real difference is to do with sociology and class in particular. Think of Shaw’s Pygmalion or anything by Alan Ayckbourn. But when you mine for the American equivalent you run into race, a subject on which people are far more sensitive.4

In a later interview, he added: The moment you get into America you get into race – and immediately people start getting nervous. We had a black inmate and a black guard and a Puerto Rican lead, and it’s not that you can’t make jokes about it but you’ve got to be careful, it’s better if blacks make jokes about blacks and Jews make jokes about Jews but when anyone else starts doing it people get very nervous, so I always thought it was more a sociological problem than a

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problem concerning the translation of the language. Those things are easily correctable but sociologically it’s trickier.5

The writers turned Fletcher from a subversive white workingclass rogue into a cheeky small-time Hispanic criminal, Hector Fuentes, played by a Puerto Rican actor from New York, Jose Perez. Godber’s character became Nicky Palik (Bobby Sandler), a gentle young Jew. As the men are being processed in the first episode Palik describes the ‘naïve charm’ that leads Fuentes to mentor him in the same way as Fletcher did in the original. But Sandler lacked Richard Beckinsale’s ability to convey that combination of vulnerable naïvete and wily selfimprovement that made Godber such a strong character. The ‘correctional officers’ (known as ‘bulls’ rather than ‘screws’ by American felons) better replicated those of Porridge. Barrowclough morphed into Mr Sullivan, ably played by the veteran

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Mr Gibson welcomes Hector Fuentes to Alamesa Prison.

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Mr Sullivan advises Fuentes to keep his nose clean.

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comic actor Tom Poston with a bemused hangdog face similar to that of Brian Wilde. Mackay became Mr Gibson, played by Mel Stewart, a stalwart of American TV comedy. Gibson was a no-nonsense African American with comparable views to Mackay on the innate recidivism of the natural born felon. Fuentes’ right-hand man is another African American, Lester De Mott, played by Hal Williams. Williams had been the police officer ‘Smitty’ Smith in the successful American adaptation of Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son – Sanford and Son (1972–7). De Mott is comparable to MacLaren in Porridge, but he is not mixed race like Maclaren, with the opportunity for comedic nuances between MacLaren’s Scottish and West Indian ancestry lost as a result. This reflected the fact that one legacy of segregation is the greater taboo in America about mixed-race relationships and their offspring (in many states, it was illegal to marry someone of a different race until 1967). De Mott had a more central role than MacLaren, appearing in all twenty-four episodes but while his blackness is not used as a comedic

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vehicle it is chillingly unambiguous. We meet him in the first episode dressed in a burgundy leather cap with matching shoes and trousers and a moustache, looking every inch the archetypal Seventies ‘Fly Guy’ of Blaxploitation movies. Jokes about homosexual behaviour in prison, originally used in Porridge, were reused but there was no equivalent of the character Lukewarm. His absence was likely due to the fact that America is a more religious and homophobic country than Britain and because it lacks a tradition of camp comedy. The last central character is Cleaver. Played by Rick Hurst (who later appeared as the doltish Deputy Cletus in the Dukes of Hazzard), he’s a happy man of low intelligence but high loyalty – an American version of ‘Bunny’ Warren from the original. To be fair, the greater emphasis on race in the American version of Porridge did make it comparably realistic – not least because the prison population of the United States has always reflected its racial divide, with a much higher proportion of ethnic minorities in jail than in Britain.6 There were also similarities between the two shows that did work. For example, Fletcher’s classic line about being better off in prison because of the dire conditions outside was handed to Fuentes in episode one of On The Rocks. ‘There are worse places to be,’ Fuentes reassures everyone, ‘look at the state of this once great nation of ours: energy crisis, economy crisis, unemployment, pollution. It could be worse, we could be free!’ This made sense to American audiences because the entire capitalist world was in recession following the oil crisis of 1973. Another theme in the original that made sense to Americans was Fletcher/Fuentes’ disdain for political and social elites. On The Rocks was shown in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal, at a time when rates of social mobility in America began a long decline and the inequality gap widened. This exchange takes place in the first episode: FUENTES This really ain’t such a bad slammer. It’s minimum security, no bigtime hoodlums in here. CLEAVER Yeah, this can’s always had a lot of high-class educated dudes.

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FUENTES More than ever now! Today in this once great nation of ours there’s a very slender line between making a living and fraud.7

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There was a slender line in the comedy itself between the American taste for satirizing corrupt elites and the British taste for mocking an institutionalized class structure. The most political episodes of Porridge ever made, ‘Poetic Justice’ and ‘Rough Justice’ were actually conceived in the United States and first used in On The Rocks. The plot worked well on both sides of the Atlantic because the idea of judge and felon sharing a prison cell in a collapsed moral and social hierarchy was a universally understood way of exploring the moral ambiguities of any justice system. The main problem that the writers faced was the conditioned perceptions of each national audience about the kind of society that prisons operate in and, consequently, which communities they draw their inmates from. Dick Clement noted that, although he and La Frenais were writing at a time when social deference in Britain was declining, class consciousness in Britain was as sharp as ever: Gibson with Fuentes, De Mott, Cleaver and Palik at their induction.

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In the long run [the divide in Britain] is a financial thing, it’s economic; it’s more to do with money than with class now, but class is still there. Britain is still rooted in class, everyone knows everyone else’s background the moment they open their mouth. When Dick and I went to America to do the American version of Porridge, we’d lost the class thing … when we started writing in America we realized we’d lost class as a source of material it was now race or money. We’d lost the bedrock that was our DNA.8

The historical reasons for the British obsession with class are complex but they come down to the fact that Americans define class more economically so that what you come to earn and own is the basis of your social status rather than the class culture into which you were born. This forms the basis of the American Dream and the United States’ higher rate of social mobility. Although education and profession are status symbols in both countries, Britons care more about the cultural origins of an individual however successful they’ve become. The American obsession with race hindered the adaptation of Porridge as much as the British obsession with class had forged the original. Despite shared histories of slavery in both continents, it has rarely occurred in Europe itself. Consequently, racial segregation has rarely been imposed in law as it was in America in order to contain the black population after the abolition of slavery. Class culture in the United States tends to be mediated more through race – so that when Americans think of culturally determined socioeconomic differences they are more likely to think of an ethnic hierarchy than the British do. This elision of class and race also helped to scupper ABC’s adaptation of Dad’s Army in 1976, which never made it beyond a pilot episode. The class comedy of the British original gave way to ethnic stereotypes, so that Captain Mainwaring was transformed into ‘Captain Nick Rosatti’, a vain Italian American, while Sergeant Wilson became ‘Sergeant Max Raskin’, a wisecracking Jew. Inserting an African American into the platoon of Rear Guard was not possible, as

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it was with On The Rocks, because the American military was racially segregated until the Korean War.9 America’s deeper ethnic divisions probably explain why All In The Family was the most successful adaptation of a British sitcom in the 1970s. Its dramatic core was the brazen expression of racial bigotry by its white, ‘blue collar’ anti-hero. In each country, Alf Garnett and Archie Bunker were ostensibly having their bigotry mocked; but their popularity was actually based on the fact that most viewers shared Alf and Archie’s views. A comedy set in prison also had less appeal in the United States because its penal system is more punitive. Even in a country that romanticizes gangsters, America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, imprisoning more of its citizens (one in every hundred) than anywhere else, including totalitarian states like China. That trend rose sharply in the 1970s, as a result of Richard Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’, the federal narcotics policy that led to a doubling of the prison population in twenty years. It’s also worth noting that capital punishment was abolished in Britain in 1967. Although briefly suspended in the United States from 1972 to 1976, execution for major crimes like murder was reintroduced in a majority of states due to public demand, whereas British politicians resisted those demands. Therefore, while crime rose in both countries in the period that Porridge and On The Rocks were produced, America’s harsher penal system made it a trickier subject to base comedy on. As John Rich explained, ‘there is … a difference in the style of prisons: we have very vicious prisons in America and I don’t think it would work to have a show like Porridge, set in a more gentle form of establishment’.10 At the same time, American producers couldn’t make the sitcom too realistic for fear of putting off viewers. American prison movies like Cool Hand Luke (1967), starring Paul Newman, and Escape From Alcatraz (1979), starring Clint Eastwood, dramatized the endemic brutality in American prisons. Their heroes’ struggle to regain freedom was more a metaphor for the

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Fletcher persuades Urwin to hand over his gun in ‘The Desperate Hours’.

American pursuit of liberty than it was a celebration of law breaking. Prison friendships do exist in Hollywood, like that of Andy and ‘Red’ in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), but they too are based on the hope of escape. In contrast, Porridge dealt with the mundane domestic lives of misfits; its plain and portly hero counsels his followers to keep their heads down and do their time. The occasional prisoner who tries to escape Slade is seen as desperate and unstable, like Urwin in the television series, or as ruthless and deluded like Oakes in the film version. Porridge therefore fell between two stools across the Atlantic. It had to reflect the tougher world of the American penal system to maintain its realistic ethos. But the show also had to be softened because sitcom is a format that can’t bear any violence, and it’s one that’s based on containment not escape, so that characters like Fuentes and Palik were unable to be conventionally heroic for American audiences. Dick Clement remembers the dilemma that he and La Frenais faced:

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It didn’t translate to America because they were nervous about making it, I don’t know why they commissioned it now, they were nervous about it being in a prison because in America [prison is] really dull and hard. One network executive suggested that we put the prison in Hawaii the most ludicrous suggestion we’d ever heard! As if seeing a palm tree out of the prison bars is going to make it more palatable to the middle classes!11

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The opening titles began with a distance shot of a modern concrete jail scorched by Californian sunshine, segueing to jolly closeups of each main character, all accompanied by a jaunty vaudeville tune; gone was the chilling sound of keys locking cell doors and the faceless or forlorn figures of screws and inmates walking the gantrys. The more basic problem that John Rich and the writers faced was casting the show. Most of the American actors in On The Rocks just weren’t good enough, as Dick Clement said: ‘We never found a Ronnie Barker … and we ended up with Jose Perez. I guess there was some thinking somewhere that Puerto Rican was the equivalent of Cockney.’12 Though competent enough, Fuentes lacked the comic timing and dramatic nuance that Barker brought to the role. John Rich acknowledged the deficit between the two versions after flying to Britain to watch Barker and Beckinsale rehearse: ‘they were magnificent and I drooled over their comic timing’, he said, ‘I was particularly impressed with the way they handled language with a kind of rapidity, an element I would have liked in my version’.13 Some reviews of On The Rocks were favourable and it attracted a large enough audience to satisfy advertisers, making it a moderate critical and commercial success in the United States. However, Rich’s fear that it would be criticized for being soft on crime proved correct: in 1975 there were public complaints from a right-wing pressure group, the National Association for Justice, who asked ABC to cancel the series on the grounds that it made prison life look comfortable and so encouraged criminality. Those complaints compounded the poor performances and awkward racialization of the show. Despite all that, ABC asked Clement and La Frenais to produce a second series.

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The pair refused because they’d come to loathe On The Rocks. Fletcher’s lines had to be more evenly spread around the other characters to cushion Fuentes’ performance, and even then the cast repeatedly mistimed dialogue. Dick Clement remembers: It was much harder work than in Britain because we never found an American actor who could play Fletcher the way we wanted. It just seemed as if all the subtlety and nuances of the British series had been lost; we just knew it wasn’t any good. I remember being in the studio until one o’clock in the morning doing retakes. In the end, the show was made in the cutting room, which wasn’t the way we’d worked before. 14

The refusal came as a shock to the network. ‘We were the only people I think to this day who adapted our own show, so we had nobody else to blame,’ said Clement, ‘[and] I think we’re the only people in the history of American television who turned down a second series; I don’t regret it because I’d got to the point where it wasn’t fun.’15 The contrast was brought home when they returned to London in January 1977 to oversee rehearsals for the final series of Porridge. La Frenais remembers ‘walking into that rehearsal room in Acton and sitting down with the British cast and drinking the horrible coffee – it was like going back to your favourite pub, it was such a lovely feeling. It was a joy revisiting the original characters, [we] couldn’t wait’.16 Although On The Rocks is forgotten in the United States, the legacy of Porridge in Britain had a shaky start with a spin-off series that’s also been forgotten. Before analysing Going Straight, we should take a look at the big screen swan song of the original sitcom. On 1 January 1979, far away from Beverly Hills on a bitterly cold, snowy day in Essex, Dick Clement eased himself into the director’s chair outside Chelmsford Prison and shouted ‘Action!’ On a tight schedule with a small budget he took charge of the film version of Porridge, happily marshaling its cast and crew for the last time.

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6  ‘You can’t buck the system’: Screening Porridge Released in 1979, Porridge is one of the best cinematic versions of a situation comedy ever made. Such films were common in the Seventies but most were second-rate cash-ins hampered by characters leaving their normal habitat, thus removing that crucial ingredient of sitcom: confinement. For example, the 1977 film version of Are You Being Served? took the staff of Grace Brothers department store on holiday to Spain and the result was panned by critics. It helped that Clement and La Frenais had already adapted The Likely Lads for the cinema with some success in 1976. They had more control over the film version of Porridge because it was directed by Clement himself and because their own company – Witzend – was in charge of production. After Columbia Pictures turned it down, Lew Grade stepped in, offering a small budget of £250,000 under the aegis of his company Black Lion Films. Production began well: whereas government officials had thwarted BBC attempts to film in a real prison, they cooperated with Black Lion, because any fears they once had about the show romanticizing criminality had gone. It helped that the head of the prison service at the Home Office was a fan of the show. When part of HMP Chelmsford in Essex was destroyed by an accidental fire in

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1978, and the prisoners were dispersed to other jails, he offered it as a location before rebuilding started. The schedule was so tight that Clement had to shoot thirteen days straight: ‘It was pretty gruelling and was the toughest film I got to make in that respect,’ he said.1 Filming took place between January and February 1979 in icy weather far away from the Californian sun which had burnished the scriptwriting. The experience of being in an actual prison was chilling for the actors. Interviewed on set by the Observer, Richard Beckinsale said ‘The place gets worse every day, it all comes closing in on you after a while, but it’s certainly easier to get the atmosphere right.’2 Looking back, Peter Vaughan said ‘To go in at eight o’clock in the morning and have that “clang!” behind you and be searched and work there all day and then go out, it was quite a relief to get out in the fresh air again; you really got the feel of what it was like to be in prison.’ Dick Clement recalled ‘It reminded us all the time of the reality of prison; it was wonderful to have the real thing but you did feel those walls closing in around you.’3 There were a few changes: Geoffrey Bayldon took over the role of Slade’s governor (the aptly named Mr Treadaway) from Michael Barrington’s Mr Venables.4 The essential quartet of Fletcher, Godber, Mackay and Barrowclough were present but Lukewarm was missing and MacLaren’s role was negligible.5 The others – from Ives to Grouty – were all there, and a few new characters were introduced: Mr Beale, played by Christopher Godwin, is a pompous, evangelical Christian prison officer from Essex who wants to emulate Mr Mackay. Rudge, played by Daniel Peacock is a frightened, sullen young prisoner, to whom Fletcher reiterates advice he originally gave Godber: Prison is like life, you know. You need something to believe in, in here, something to hang on to so you don’t go under. You can’t buck the system, it’s mad to try; but you can lift the heart with an occasional little victory.6

Screening Porridge

Fletcher mentors a frightened Rudge in the prison showers.

Though still attached to Fletcher, Godber is by now a confident young inmate. We see him in command of the prison kitchen, swirling a vat of soup while earnestly saying, ‘It lacks something, Lotterby. With this soup, Elizabeth David recommends coriander, bay leaves and a dash of pepper’ (the character of Lotterby was named in honour of the show’s producer). He sees his former, terrified self in Rudge, but when he suggests that Rudge needs further mentoring Fletcher retorts ‘Listen, I broke you in Godber because you was forced upon my cell, and it was in my interest not to have a manic depressive in the bottom bunk.’ 7 As in the TV series, the prisoners’ view of moral equity behind bars is shared by Mackay, who refuses to discriminate between different types of inmates. While taking Beale on an introductory tour of the prison, they pass a group of openly gay prisoners in a workshop. ‘Are you wearing makeup again, Whittaker?’, barks Mackay at one of them. ‘It’s only a touch of rouge, Mr Mackay,’ says Whittaker plaintively. ‘GET IT OFF!’ Mackay barks again, after which Whittaker looks round at his friends and nonchalantly asks ‘Anyone

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got any cleansing cream?’ They all check their pockets. Soon after, Beale expresses his distaste for what he calls ‘poovery’, prompting this exchange about homosexual prisoners: MACKAY We find it best to put them all together in G Wing (smirking) – or as we term it, ‘Married Quarters’. BEALE I don’t understand it myself, I never did. MACKAY Don’t let that show, Mr Beale. My attitude is, whatever he is, each man in here is as despicable as the next one. BEALE That’s very fair minded of you, sir. MACKAY I like to think so.

As in the TV series, the writers contrasted the warm, quasifamily embrace of Fletcher’s misfits with the stiff, quasi-military camaraderie of Slade’s screws. Mackay proudly shows off the officers’ bar to Beale, which he’s had constructed in a prison basement, its bare painted bricks reminiscent of the cells they’ve just locked for the 116

‘Are you wearing make up again, Whittaker?’ Mackay and Beale address ‘poovery’ among prisoners.

Screening Porridge

Beale, Barrowclough and Mackay lament their lot in the deserted officers’ bar.

evening. A running joke of the film is that the bar is always empty. ‘Not many of the chaps in tonight!’, Beale says breezily. ‘There never are,’ replies Barrowclough, ‘It’s a desperate place. The only reason I come here is because it’s either this or going home.’8 Clement and La Frenais maintained their policy of showing jailers in the round so that they never descend into nasty, authoritarian caricatures. In a poignant moment – still relevant when officers are stretched by overcrowded jails – Mackay ruefully says: No, you haven’t entered a glamorous profession, Mr Beale. We’re underpaid, understaffed, and overlooked – even though every time we walk these landings we put our lives on the line … And the public never hears of us – except adversely, when some namby-pamby politician takes up the case of a psychopath who claims that we’ve been less than gentle with him.9

The cultural politics of class, which were racialized in the American version, are once more in clear view. The upper-middle-

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class Banyard is back as the ‘defrocked dentist’ jailed for drugging and molesting his female patients. Banyard is always complaining about prison conditions in superior tones that suggest he is above it all. In a rare compact with ‘orrible Ives’, Fletcher reminds Banyard where he’s ended up: IVES I suppose you think you’re entitled to something better ’cos you went to a public school? BANYARD On the contrary Ives, I’m well used to this kind of food; I went to Harrow. FLETCHER Oh, that’s good! That’s a good advert for the public school system, innit? It prepares you for the nick. ’Course, it’s worse for him in here than most of us, innit? ’Cos he has had further to drop – professional man, dentist, tragic.10

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More jaunty in tone than the TV original, the film opens with pop music of the time, including Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ recent chart success Hit Me With Your Rythym Stick (1978). The closing titles are accompanied by a song written especially for the film by Ian La Frenais and Lem Lubin called Free Inside, the lyrics of Grout and Oakes plot Oakes’s escape from Slade.

Screening Porridge

which correspond to express Fletcher’s philosophy of maintaining your identity during incarceration. Fletcher and Godber get caught up in a break-out then try to break back in before their absence is discovered. This helped turn the sitcom into a 93-minute feature film (taking characters into the countryside for the first time since the series one episode ‘A Day Out’) while maintaining the claustrophobic intensity of the TV series. The plot echoed that of Two Way Stretch – a prison comedy of 1960 starring Peter Sellers, which had also been made by Lew Grade’s Black Lion Films. Sellers played Dodger Lane, who escapes in order to carry out a diamond heist, then returns to jail with the jewels to give himself the perfect alibi. The difference between the two films is that when Fletcher and Godber break back into prison it’s not to complete a crime but to finish their sentences. In Porridge, an armed robber called Oakes (Barry Rutter) pays Harry Grout to spring him from jail under the cover of a football match played between a team of Slade inmates and a team of visiting celebrities from London. The ‘celebrities’ turn out to be a bunch of second-rate nonentities, once more emphasizing how ignored and remote prisoners are. ‘Chap with the red hair? Tells the weather on Anglia Television,’ Mackay tells a disappointed Fletcher. When Oakes steals the celebrities’ coach and forces Fletcher and Godber to join the escape, they tell the gangster that they’re nearing the end of their sentences with a lot to lose: ‘Listen Oaksie’, adds Fletch, ‘I ’aven’t got the money for plastic surgery and a first class ticket to Acapulco.’ As they speed across Scotland to catch a boat to the Continent, they eventually persuade Oakes to let them go. This reiterated Fletcher’s pragmatic desire to keep his head down and do his time. The characters in Porridge aren’t conventionally heroic; most are just inadequate men in search of a better life. Misfits they may be but martyrs they are not. Successfully evading a police hunt, the film ends with the pair back in their cell, biting into apples they stole from a farm. They

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Governor Treadaway greets the captain of the ‘celebrity’ football team.

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Fletcher and Godber are dumped in the countryside by Oakes. Porridge (dir. Dick Clement, 1979).

Screening Porridge

‘My day will come’. Mackay realizes he’s been duped.

have the last laugh while Mackay has the last line: ‘the Governor may believe your story’, he seethes, ‘but the Governor does not walk these floors. Now I can’t prove you were out Fletcher, Godber … but mark my words, my day will come.’11 It never did. After a brief appearance in the spin-off Going Straight, the actor Fulton Mackay died of cancer, aged sixty-four in 1987. While the film was being edited, cast and crew were grief stricken by news that Richard Beckinsale had died of a heart attack in his sleep, on 19 March 1979, aged just thirty-one. By then a national star, Beckinsale had made five out of six episodes of a new sitcom for BBC2 – Bloomers, about a small London flower business. The film of his other success, Rising Damp, was made without him in 1980 and suffered as a result. 12 Porridge was the last work he completed and when it opened on 12 August 1979, the remaining cast assembled for the last time, as Ian La Frenais remembers: ‘We went to see the premiere in London and there’s Richard on the screen – not at the premiere – it was awful.’13

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Poor reviews made an upsetting time worse. The Guardian film critic, Derek Malcolm, said ‘Porridge suffers … from the total lack of ambition that generally afflicts British television spin-offs.’ The Evening Standard agreed that the plot was only enough ‘to sustain one TV episode’. Some liked it: the Daily Express said, ‘There is a lot of merriment to be savoured yet the film never loses sight of the grim realities of prison life that lurk beneath.’14 With more hindsight, in an era when sitcoms are rarely made into films, critics have praised it as the best example of an otherwise terrible genre.15 Before examining the show’s long-term legacy we should take a look at Going Straight, its underrated spin-off in which Fletcher leaves Slade Prison for good and takes viewers on a journey to freedom. But freedom for Fletcher means signing on in Muswell Hill not sunbathing in Acapulco, and life outside turns out to be almost as tough as jail: poisoned with guilt, boredom, frustration and temptation.

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7  Going Straight: Freedom and restraint after Porridge Porridge finished its original run on television with the episode ‘Final Stretch’, broadcast on 25 March 1977. Bereft by Godber’s release, Fletcher accepts Mackay’s plan to place another youth in the cell to be mentored (on condition he won’t be Scottish). When the Scotsman takes this as an admission ‘that the system always wins’, Fletcher replies ‘Nobody wins, Mr Mackay. That’s what’s so tragic.’ Fletcher bids farewell to Maclaren, the last of his little platoon left in Slade.

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Norman Stanley Fletcher’s verdict on the British penal system came with a sting in its tail as he bid farewell to 15.7 million viewers. Asked to give his new cellmate some advice he says, ‘Glad to, Mr Mackay, sir. I shall simply tell him three things: Bide your time, keep your nose clean … and don’t let the bastards grind you down.’1 The credits roll against a freeze frame of Fletcher lying on his bunk sticking two fingers up at his old adversary. The audience survey for the final episode detected no public fatigue with the show. One viewer said that it was ‘a punishment not to watch Porridge’. The BBC concluded that ‘the sample expressed themselves delighted with yet another witty, funny and extremely entertaining episode in which humour and sentiment were skillfully blended and which provided an excellent finale’.2 Everyone involved in making Porridge wanted to produce a fourth series. Except for its star. Ronnie Barker had once loved the role so much that he collected an award by turning up as Fletcher, handcuffed to Fulton Mackay in full uniform. The stunt backfired because Mackay’s key wouldn’t open the cuffs and it was half an hour before the pair could be separated. The mishap was symbolic because by 1977 Barker felt shackled to the role. As well as a successful partnership with Ronnie Corbett in The Two Ronnies, since 1976 he’d worked on the Roy Clarke sitcom Open All Hours about a mean-spirited Yorkshire shopkeeper called Arkwright, in which he co-starred with David Jason who had appeared in Porridge. He later explained the decision: It was probably the best and most important show I did, but Open All Hours topped it as far as fun was concerned. I loved doing both sitcoms but because of David Jason in Open All Hours it was slightly better because of the laughs we had. I always worried about getting stuck with a character; I didn’t want that. So after deciding to call it a day with Porridge I told Bill Cotton, Head of Comedy at that point, that I wanted to move on and do Open All Hours. He tried to persuade me to stick with Porridge but it was no use.3

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However, Barker did agree to revive Fletcher in a spin-off series, which saw him released from prison and struggling to adapt to civil society. Dick Clement said: ‘we ended with a kind of compromise by doing Going Straight. We just felt we couldn’t abandon the character – people still wanted to see him. I think Porridge would have taken another series, but Ronnie was always working and wanted to move on.’4 The six episodes of Going Straight, broadcast on BBC1 between 24 February and 7 April 1978, have rarely been repeated but deserve to be reassessed because the show won huge audiences and BAFTA awards. The writers had already tackled the subject of ex-prisoners’ troubled lives in a sitcom called Thick As Thieves. Networked on ITV in the summer of 1974, its two lead actors were Bob Hoskins and John Thaw but despite their combined talents the eight episodes of Thick As Thieves didn’t work. According to one critic ‘the writers tripped up with this show … the production was awash with fluffed lines’.5 Clement and La Frenais’s determination to have another go at the subject, coupled with the fact that a previous spin-off – Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? – was successful, put Going Straight into production in the autumn of 1977. The BBC launched it on the cover of Radio Times with a photo of Fletcher standing outside Slade Prison looking bewildered. Frank Norman (the villain turned author whose work had tried to improve understanding of prison life) wrote an accompanying piece about the trials of freedom. ‘An ex-con’, wrote Norman, ‘may have a last go at treading the straight and narrow path in a world that he has even less time for than it has for him.’ But then he reaches the local job centre where a ‘dapper civil servant rips open the sealed envelope from the prison authorities’. It’s clear he has no qualifications or work experience so he’s sent to Social Security and soon returns to a life of crime. Then as now, rates of recidivism were high in Britain with around 65 per cent of prisoners reoffending.6

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Fletcher’s trials were immediately apparent to the 13.8 million people who settled down to watch the first episode of Going Straight in 1978. Collecting his paltry belongings from the discharging officer of Slade Prison, he optimistically relishes the simple pleasures awaiting him as a free man: What you take for granted will be objects of unsurpassable joy to me. Like having hot water to shave in; clean sheets; the right to sit on your own lavatory for as long as it takes to read the Sun – about a minute and a half; privacy, warmth, no smell of disinfectant or waterlogged cabbage; the right to sit by the flickering flames of your own artificial gas log fire.

But the officer paints a bleak picture of life on the outside: ‘Gas bills, water bills, all sorts of bills – bigger bills than when you come in. Privacy? Warmth? In a dole queue!’7 This reprised a motif of Porridge: Fletcher’s joke about life in 1970s Britain being tougher for a free citizen than it was for someone in jail. Viewers got the joke 126 Slade’s discharging officer warns Fletcher of what awaits him on the outside.

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Fletcher is launched into an uncertain future in Going Straight. Radio Times, 18–24 February 1978.

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because Britain was still grappling with recession in the spring of 1978 and months later it was plunged into social unrest known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’. As the metal gate of Slade Prison slams shut behind him, Fletcher’s jacket is caught in it so he’s forced to ring the bell and ask to be released again. It’s a simple metaphor of an ex-criminal forever trapped by his past, and that central theme of Going Straight was best explored in the opening episode, ‘Going Home’, which brought

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Fletcher and Mackay together for the last time. They encounter each other on a train journey from Cumbria to London as the felon returns home and the officer sets off to a job interview in the capital. This scenario reprised the pilot episode, ‘Prisoner & Escort’, when Mackay takes Fletcher north to begin his sentence; but this time there are no handcuffs and more ambiguity. When Mackay tries to maintain the moral divide between officer and felon, Fletcher says, ‘You can’t talk to me like that now … I’m a free man now, you and me equal now, right?’ to which the Scotsman replies ‘Never! Never, Fletcher, not in a million years!’ Over drinks on the train, Fletcher breaks down Mackay’s personal identity just as Mackay stripped away Fletcher’s identity at his induction four years earlier. He suggests that the Scotsman, now up for compulsory retirement at fifty-five, should get a job as a train guard or traffic warden because he needs to be in a uniform: ‘you’ve always hidden behind that mantle of security, haven’t you?’ Fletcher tells him that despite years of law-abiding service he too is on the scrapheap because of age and economic circumstance: Free Fletcher warns Mackay what awaits him in retirement.

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‘we’ve both led very different lives over the past twenty-five years, haven’t we? And now here we are, in the same boat – jobless. We’re both shuffling along in the same dole queue.’ Drunk and maudlin, Mackay collapses: ‘[I’m] out to pasture, like some retired pit pony.’ Fletcher moves in for the kill: You uniformed men all make the same mistake, you see, you all do – screws, cops, soldiers, you all think that your loyalty is eternally appreciated by them you serve – ‘the Force, the Regiment, they’ll look after us’. You seem to think that there’s some sort of father figure up there who looks after his own. But there’s not, you know, there’s just a computer, that’s all, a big computer decides when your time’s up and gives you the chop, or in your case a clock … Listen you are in a very precarious position, do you know that? I’ve seen it all happen: bitterness leads to resentment, you think the world owes you a living, you’ll probably end up in the dock, you know … on some pathetic little charge: stealing a tin of Duraglit out of Tesco’s, so you can polish up your medals, take ’em round the pawn shop. 129 Mackay offers his old adversary his hand, as each man begins their life outside prison.

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This final round of sparring caught a central theme of Porridge: class status and its unequal relationship with morality and power. Fletcher erodes Mackay’s faith in a system that claims to reward the law-abiding; but he’s soon made aware that it’s even harder for reformed criminals to reap the rewards of civil life. Fletcher was forty-five years old when released, having spent on average seven days out of thirty in various prisons during his adult life – by his own admission ‘a shocking waste’.8 Discussing the writers’ aims, Dick Clement said: He’d been inside a long time and faced real problems when he got out, so we tried confronting those predicaments. We’ve always done that in our scripts – otherwise you rely on a lot of jokes, which doesn’t appeal to us. People have been too harsh towards Going Straight and it will always be a favourite of mine.9

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Whereas in Porridge viewers got vicarious pleasure from seeing Fletcher resist authority, in Going Straight they were invited to sympathize with his attempt to live without scheming and dreaming, trying to create a different kind of routine: one governed not by officers’ keys opening his cell door, but an alarm clock ringing to announce the start of his working day. Like many ex-cons, Fletcher has to cope with a shattered marriage. He returns home to Muswell Hill in north London to find that his beloved wife Isobel has left him after twenty-four years of marriage for Reg Jessop, who runs a cardboard box factory on the outskirts of London – a man he scathingly refers to as ‘my wife’s cardboard lover’. The decision to write Isobel out of the show was Ronnie Barker’s, as Dick Clement explained: ‘He didn’t want to suddenly get into a conventional domestic situation with wife and kids; he wanted to keep it more unique than that, which I think was right. That’s why we wrote his wife out, leaving him no alternative but to fend for himself.’10

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Unlike Mrs Mainwaring, who was never seen in Dad’s Army, Isobel had appeared once in Porridge when Fletch scams a weekend of compassionate leave by faking the impending break up of his marriage. Now it has really happened, and to make matters worse, his daughter takes her mother’s side: ‘She won’t [come back],’ says Ingrid, ‘all Mum ever wanted, all any of us ever wanted, was an honest wage in this house, not a dishonest cushion.’ 11 Fletcher tries to retrieve a stash of money from an old bank robbery; but when he gets to the Essex field where he buried it the field has been built on. This defeat sets up the remaining four episodes in which he struggles with the boredom, despondency and frustration of trying to integrate. ‘Look, I intend to earn an honest wage,’ Fletcher tells Ingrid, ‘but it’s not bleedin’ easy when you’ve got a record.’12 When she asks her dad about his sex drive, regurgitating what she’s read in her Cosmopolitan magazine about the mid-life crisis, Fletcher retorts: I will not have any of this permissive, liberated talk in this house! I’ll tell you what my mid-life crisis is, shall I? Shall I spell it out for ya? I am a forty-five Ingrid tells her father to earn an honest wage.

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year old ex-lag with no money, no prospects and as of now no wife. Now, for the sake of my family I’m trying to go straight – which at my age, with my qualifications, my future, holds about as much excitement as a wet Sunday afternoon in Merthyr Tydfil.13

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Fletcher also discovers that Godber has spent his time since leaving prison turning his postal romance with Ingrid into a live-in love affair that threatens to make Godber his son-in-law. With the two men cohabiting once again, Fletcher attempts to maintain the old pecking order of Slade Prison by rebuking Godber for using his toiletries, but to no avail. ‘Had a shave, have ya? Use one of my blades did ya?’ he snaps, to which Lennie replies ‘Oh come on Fletch, we’re not inside now, naffin’ hell.’14 Godber has found work as a long-distance lorry driver and cheerily encourages Fletcher to do the same. This mirrored the pair’s relationship in prison – when the more aspirational Godber had studied hard to sit exams, while coping with a cellmate who was cynical about the benefits of formal education. Free again, he is forced

Fletcher and Godber share a pint in the pub.

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to learn from the young man. ‘There is Fletcher learning the ropes from Godber, who’s got a job and is established,’ said Ian La Frenais, ‘there is a role reversal there.’15 The actor Patricia Brake takes the point further: Godber of course is getting on with it; he’s got a job, he’s got a lorry and he’s got a relationship with me; they’ve become the parents in the house (encouraging him to get a job, not to despair about his wife leaving etc.) and that must have been quite hard.16

Another difference between the two shows is that women play a prominent role in Going Straight. Ingrid appeared in just three episodes of the original but was in all six episodes of the spin-off. Patricia Brake observed that ‘Going Straight didn’t work as well as Porridge, probably because the character had so much to fight against inside. But I enjoyed them both; there aren’t many decent characters written for women, so I was jolly lucky being in something as good as those two shows.’17 No longer a gum-chewing, bra-less girl who brings news of home on visiting day and a rare scent of female for sex-starved inmates, Ingrid has become a surrogate mother to Fletcher. But she’s also a very modern woman, self-consciously in command of her life and a match for the men around her. She represents a slowly changing social order to which her dad, like Lennie, must submit. Although Ingrid has no desire to be middle class like Bob’s wife Thelma in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? like most women of the time she aspires to a better standard of living than her forebears.18 She feels held back by her husband-to-be: ‘I’ve got a lot in common with your dad,’ says Lennie cheerily when discussing their engagement, to which Ingrid replies, ‘Unfortunately, yes. That’s always going to embarrass me, that is. I mean when we live somewhere nice, people are going to ask me how I met my husband, and I’m going to have to say “He shared a cell with my dad.”’19

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Fletcher’s probation officer tells him to get a job.

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Fletcher is also cajoled by his middle-class probation officer, Mrs Chapman, played by Rowena Cooper.20 He has to see her regularly as a condition of his release and submit to her demands that he finds a job and doesn’t see his criminal cronies. With Mackay gone, she is the figure of authority that Fletcher most often encounters, but with a difference: she’s also a confessor. It is to her, as well as Ingrid, that he expresses his frustrations. The writers show that he’s not just wrestling with a change of lifestyle but also a change of identity, as he explains one morning to Mrs Chapman: At least when I was doing porridge I had a goal; you know what I mean? It was called getting out; it kept you going. It was sufficient unto itself. But now I am out, well, it’s a bit of a let down … It’s the first time I’ve gone straight. Previously I’ve been looking forward to a bit of skulduggery; you have a purpose in life, don’t ’cha? Not to get caught! Even if you’re not doing anything at the moment, you’re always planning that little jackpot around the corner. All sitting round the kitchen table of an evening – me and the lads, a few bottles of pale ale and some fish and chips, know what I mean?21

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Fletcher leaves for work.

Fletcher tries several strategies to reassert himself as the man of the house. First, he attempts to bond with his estranged teenage son, Raymond, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst. Then aged sixteen in one of his first roles, Lyndhurst went on to fame in Only Fools and Horses and displayed his nascent talents in Going Straight as an indolent, mono-tonal adolescent. He’s a disappointment to Fletcher because he lacks the energy and wit either to move up in the world or to follow his father into a career in crime. Raymond is also a source of guilt because he feels no connection with a father who’s been in prison for most of his childhood. Fletcher busies himself with DIY projects that end in failure or he listlessly visits pubs, betting shops and cafes. His role reversal with Ingrid and Godber is compounded by the arrival of another would-be mentor: his new employer. Mrs Chapman finds him a job as a night porter in a Paddington hotel. The owner, Mr McEwan, is a genial old colonial gent (played by David Swift, who also appeared with Richard Beckinsale in the sitcom Bloomers). Keen to give ex-cons a break, McEwan regards them in the same paternalistic way as he

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Fletcher despairs of his indolent son, Raymond.

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regards the African natives he once employed. Fletcher turns up drunk on the first night, having been wrested from a pub by Godber, but eventually adjusts to working life, proving himself a loyal and honest employee. In the final episode, Godber becomes Fletcher’s son-in-law. The plot revolves around the impending marriage of Ingrid and Lennie, and Fletcher’s shame at not having the money to give them a good wedding. He accepts the job of getaway driver for an armed robbery and goes into a pet shop to buy them a present. There he has an epiphany: seeing caged birds chirping around him, he realizes that if he commits the crime he’ll be back inside and lose the new family that is about to emerge from the old one. Amid the chirping birds, we hear the old sound of Slade’s gates and cell doors being locked and, as fear creeps across his face, the shop assistant asks ‘Can I help you sir?’ to which Fletch replies ‘No, only I can do that.’22

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Mr McEwan decides to employ Fletcher as a receptionist in his hotel.

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Fletcher meets an old fellow prisoner (played by Nigel Hawthorne) while working at the hotel.

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Fletcher chooses freedom while looking at caged birds.

The culmination of his relationship with Godber comes when the young man asks his future father-in-law to also be his best man: 138

I said ‘Lennie, who’s been closest to you over the last year or so?’ The truth is it’s you, Fletch. I mean, you got me through stir, you’ve been me mate, me cellie, me mentor, father figure in some ways, father-in-law soon to be. I’ve always admired you Fletch; I always respected you in the nick, but nothing like I respect you now you’re going straight. I mean, it’s been tough for you, tougher for you than for me because I’m younger than you and I’ve got Ingrid’s love to sustain me.

Avoiding eye contact with Lennie, the cynical old lag simply says ‘I’m glad you’re marrying my daughter.’23 It’s a moment of very British cauterized emotion. However, no amount of emotional nuance could hide the fact that this spin off was not as good as the original. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? augmented the original because Bob’s marriage and suburban domestic life with Thelma added tension to the already testy friendship between sensible, socially

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Godber asks Fletcher to be his best man.

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ambitious Bob and the freewheeling, proudly proletarian Terry. Going Straight, on the other hand, diluted the comedic dynamics of the original because the dramatic intensity which sprang from men being incarcerated against their will was immediately lost when Fletcher stepped outside the gates of Slade. Thwarted though he is by age, social background and a criminal record, Fletcher is now a free man with choices in life. He’s also lost the leadership of his little platoon. Gone was the illiterate docility of Bunny Warren and the touching loyalty that held them together. Gone too was Lukewarm and the conspiratorial domesticity that he offered – whether just knitting and playing draughts with the men or playing his part in their ruses to get one over on the system. Gone too was the muscular, quick-witted chippiness of Maclaren, and with it the security he provided against some of the nastier prisoners. Godber has become part of Fletcher’s real family but he’s no longer a daily presence because he’s out earning a living. As a free man, Fletcher is still bothered by officialdom. But Rowena Cooper’s well-meaning probation officer is too tough to be the comical pushover that Barrowclough was and yet she’s too sympathetic to replace Mackay’s pompous rectitude. And the petty villains of Muswell Hill who tempt Fletcher back into crime lack the chilling menace with which Grouty once commanded his complicity in Slade prison. Ronnie Barker gave this verdict on Going Straight: It was only ever going to be one series, because I didn’t want to get stuck in the character – I wanted fresh challenges. But I liked doing it, and it was lovely working with Patricia Brake and Richard Beckinsale again. There were other good actors, like Nigel Hawthorne and David Swift and, of course, Nicholas Lyndhurst playing my son. The first episode was excellent fun, because the story involved just Fulton and me on a train, with Mr Mackay getting more and more drunk. There’s no doubt the series could have continued but the danger was it could have strayed further away from the original plot.24

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Looking back on the series, Barker’s fellow actor Tony Osoba said: ‘I think the character of Fletcher is not quite as smooth in Going Straight; he’s not quite as in command as he is in Porridge. On the outside he’s a small time petty crook, it’s all he knows really: he doesn’t have a trade, he doesn’t quite know how to get by.’25 The press gave it a mixed reception. Reviewing it in the Daily Telegraph, Sean Day-Lewis thought the writers were ‘taking a risk in setting him free of the well defined boundaries in which he previously flourished’. After watching the first episode, he wrote ‘the outrageous candour, cynicism and cunning, the spontaneous kindliness and charm of his Fletch began to diffuse a little even in the confined space of the train taking him home’.26 What was the audience reaction? Evidence suggests that they judged it more as an enjoyable coda to Porridge than as a rival to it. Viewing figures for the six episodes never fell below 12 million – on average around 6 million less than its predecessor but still a figure that most writers and networks would be happy with. The first episode of a spin-off usually benefits from goodwill carried over from the original; but the dip in viewing figures for Going Straight was less than 2 million from the first to last show. The BBC audience survey echoed critics’ view that it was a worthy successor to the original. Some said they ‘found it harder to adjust to Fletcher’s new situation, feeling that the prison setting was ideal and that Porridge had a special quality of its own, which they feared would now be lost’. But ‘most people thought it an excellent idea that the series should be extended beyond the confines of Slade Prison’, because it prevented the show from ‘going stale’ and would ‘give it more scope in the form of new situations and different locations’. A majority saw Going Straight as a ‘logical progression’, enabling Fletcher to pit his wits against the outside world, and because he was able to ‘transfer in this way made the series something out of the ordinary and special’.27

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Misunderstanding of criminality stems as much from blindness to the problems that ex-cons face as it does from ignorance of why prison usually fails to rehabilitate. In that respect, Going Straight remains a rare and precious sitcom that employed a modern folk hero to engage the British people with issues they’d prefer to ignore, without preaching or forgetting to entertain them. Dick Clement believes that Going Straight has been unfairly neglected and judges the finale of the series to be one of the best episodes that he and La Frenais ever wrote: Inevitably people say it wasn’t as good as Porridge; maybe it wasn’t – it didn’t contain the same sort of security from being inside a contained environment. Nevertheless, it still had some funny moments, including the first episode where we also find Fulton leaving prison. But the final episode, ‘Going Off the Rails’, is probably the best we ever did – I’m very fond of it. It’s a good script and contains some nice textures. 28 142

Clement and La Frenais went on to write several other television series and film scripts including the BAFTA-winning adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s novel The Commitments (1991) and the well-received Beatles musical drama Across The Universe (2007). Porridge is regarded as their main contribution to British popular culture and it’s certainly the work they are most fond of. But what is the legacy of the show in terms of comedy and attitudes to criminality?

8  ‘I ain’t coming back’: The legacy of Porridge Since it ceased to be made, Porridge has been sold more profitably than any of Fletcher’s illicit deals for ‘snout’. A range of merchandise was produced over half a century, including a metal prison dish made for British Airways customers in the 2000s: stamped as the property of H.M. Prison Slade, printed on the bottom of the dish are the words ‘With British Airways saver fares everyone can afford to escape.’ After being turned into four novels and countless DVDs, the demand for more Porridge in the twenty-first century is evident: it was voted No. 7 in a 2004 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British sitcoms, while audiences for scheduled repeats could still reach 3 million per episode. In 2007, the writers were awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Honours List in recognition of their ‘services to comedy’. A decade later they rebooted Porridge for a six-part BBC series, starring Kevin Bishop as Fletcher’s grandson, Nigel, who’s been jailed for cyber crime. Despite lacking most of the original’s qualities it received over 3 million viewers per episode when it was broadcast in 2016.1 The enduring appeal of the original Porridge rests on two things apart from good writing and acting: a tolerant, humanistic view of society coupled with a desire to question authority and rebuke it where necessary, in a way that doesn’t romanticize criminality or violence. The heroes of Porridge therefore challenge ‘the system’

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without upsetting the moral order of democratic society. In short, Porridge offered viewers rebellion without disorder. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, the show had a political edge, which reflected the economic crisis that beset Britain in the 1970s. That crisis fuelled Anglo-Scottish tensions, sharpened class and race conflict, and deepened a sense of post-imperial decline among older Britons. Yet the makers of Porridge avoided explicit references to contemporary Britain, which reinforced the show’s remote prison setting and helped to give it a timeless quality. The actor Tony Osoba sees this as crucial to its longevity: One of the things that makes Porridge stand up after all these years is that you never get references to politics of the day … to pop stars of the day or popular culture, sport, cars and so on – and if you did, that would date it immediately. Also they’re dressed in prison uniforms so the street fashion of the day doesn’t appear. So it’s a little world of its own … and I think quite deliberately the writers did that so it doesn’t sound dated.2 144

Clement and La Frenais’s subsequent hit comedy drama, Auf Wiedersehen Pet (ITV, 1983–6) contained similar themes to those in Porridge. It charted the lives of seven construction workers who escape unemployment in Britain to work on building sites in Germany. Led by the canny Geordie, Dennis (Tim Healy), it’s another little platoon of misfits: seven characters from different regions and family backgrounds all forced to muddle along together in an alien environment. As Ian La Frenais said, ‘It’s about people in captive situations; that’s what Auf Wiedersehen Pet was about … that’s what Only Fools and Horses was about – they’re trapped.’3 Although the quality of Clement and La Frenais’s writing can be found in their subsequent work, Porridge appears to be a one-off with no heirs. After all, there hasn’t been another sitcom about prison. So what was the show’s long-term influence? Tony Osoba thinks it expanded the possibilities for writers:

The legacy of Porridge

It demonstrated that you can make a comedy in the most unlikely of settings; people might look at something and think ‘well, they managed it with Porridge’. For example, the Jo Brand series Getting On [set on an NHS geriatric ward]; the humour that they extract from a setting in which people are suffering, the black humour the nurses have … and I can’t remember them ever coming out of the ward, it was all contained within that working environment in much the same way Porridge is contained in the prison.4

Porridge became a benchmark for writers and performers not only in conventional sitcom but also in the more anarchic and innovative world of the sketch show. In 1976 Michael Palin proudly recorded in his diary that in London and the South of England, repeats of Monty Python (1969–74) had briefly got higher ratings than Porridge.5 Interviewed more recently about Clement and La Frenais, another member of the Python team, Eric Idle, remarked ‘I think their writing is as good as it gets; they’ve done some of the greatest comedies that have ever been seen on British television.’6 Perhaps the closest Porridge gets to progeny is the most successful British sitcom of all time: John Sullivan’s Only Fools and Horses (BBC1, 1981–91). Sullivan was working as a scene shifter on the set of Porridge when he got his first break by showing Ronnie Barker his ideas for sketches.7 The result was that Citizen Smith was commissioned, setting Sullivan on the path to success with Only Fools and Horses, starring Barker’s comedy partner, David Jason. Sullivan’s portrait of a family of white working-class spivs in 1980s multicultural south London explored the thwarted ambitions of semicriminal men and the limits of social mobility in Margaret Thatcher’s ‘entrepreneurial’ Britain with as much pathos as Porridge did in the 1970s.8 Indeed, Del and Rodney could be seen as the Fletcher and Godber of their age. Another way of looking at the legacy of Porridge is that some of its themes resonate even more than they did in the 1970s. The Anglo-Scottish antagonism between Fletcher and Mackay has more

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relevance to Britons in an age when Scottish nationalism has gone from being mocked as an eccentric irritant to being feared as a mass political movement – one that persuaded almost half of Scottish voters to cede from the United Kingdom in the Referendum of 2014. The show’s nuanced treatment of class relations may also appeal more to viewers in an age when negative representations of working-class men and women abound on British television. The journalist Sam Leith, for example, has argued that a British comic tradition of ‘pitting working class characters against authority’ (he cites Porridge as an example) has given way to comedy sketch shows that excoriate the working classes with caricatures of the ignorant and feckless like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard and Harry Enfield’s council estate couple, Wayne and Waynetta Slob. This trend may be connected to a decline in the permissibility of racial and national stereotypes in film and television comedy since the 1980s. A recent challenger of those stereotypes – the female British Muslim comic, Shappi Khorsandi – says: ‘I think Britain is all about class; we’re in such denial about how important it is. The jokes have changed from non-English speakers being the butt of the joke to [white] council estate teenage mums being the butt of the joke.’9 The enduring appeal of Porridge therefore lies in the fact that class remains the fault line in British society, coupled with the fact that contemporary comedy treats the subject with less sophistication than it did when Porridge was first broadcast. Another reason for its longevity may be the fact that while there is less social unrest than in the 1970s, apathy and cynicism towards ruling elites is more pronounced, so that affinity with anti-heroes like Fletcher is greater. Viewers now listen to Fletcher’s commentary on bankers, politicians, celebrities and the media in an age when all four have been exposed for interrelated corruption that has directly impacted the lives of ordinary people. The worst recession since the Seventies, which began with the 2008 banking crash, has been followed by scandals about MP’s expenses, corporate tax-dodging,

The legacy of Porridge

journalists’ phone hacking and the exposure of historic sexual abuse by celebrities. Porridge speaks to the angry, frustrated and disillusioned viewers of today. The popularity of Porridge is also due to its accepted place in a pantheon of sitcoms produced between the 1960s and the 1990s that form what some regard as a golden age of British television comedy. Commenting on the large audiences that Porridge repeats were getting in 1992, the Daily Telegraph’s TV critic wrote: ‘Sometimes I wonder if the BBC is doing itself any favours by transmitting this eighteen-year old series. It is so perfectly scripted, so beautifully acted, so full of humanity and so stomach-clutchingly funny, that it makes almost every contemporary TV comedy look wan.’10 Like all concepts of a golden age, that which the British ascribe to Seventies’ sitcoms says more about them now than it does about the object of their historic reverence. With the exception of popular music, comedy is the only aspect of the 1970s that’s routinely celebrated in Britain. Since Thatcherite conservatives began demonizing the Welfare State, trade unions, multiculturalism, modernist

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architecture and membership of the European Union, the Seventies have been seen as a dark age of modern times. Why is sitcom seen to light up the darkness and where does Porridge fit into that orthodoxy?

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Porridge imagined as a 1930s seaside postcard for the second series. Radio Times, 18–24 October 1975.

The legacy of Porridge

One reason is the fragmentation of television audiences in the digital age, so that an era when millions of families simultaneously sat around a single television set to watch a hit programme is now looked on nostalgically – especially by those keen to trace the decline of nuclear family life. The reach of a successful programme in the 1970s was also huge because the British watched a lot of TV. The government’s first Social Trends survey in 1971 revealed that the average Briton watched 18.6 hours a week; by 1978 that figure had risen to 22 hours. As Alwyn Turner has pointed out, this was a truly common culture with over 95 per cent of all social classes stating that TV was a major part of their leisure activity.11 A successful sitcom like Porridge could therefore have a considerable impact on the nation’s consciousness and, ultimately, its identity. The globalization of popular culture is another factor. In the digital age it’s possible for a wider range of people to exert some influence on others even if it’s just to make them laugh at a cat jumping around on YouTube. But globalization has also produced acute anxiety about economic status and cultural capital, and in that environment national identities (and nationalism) have become more, not less, pronounced. The notion of a golden age of sitcom is buttressed by a British need to feel distinctive in the face of Americanization. While American imports from Happy Days to Friends have been popular in Britain, the most cherished shows are those which have adapted this American format to suit native tastes. British sitcoms are peopled with accepted archetypes of the national character who offer satirical commentaries on national life. Indigenous comedy like Porridge has therefore become a popular historical resource; it’s one way to articulate Britishness amid a steady Americanization of national life since the 1950s – a process which, ironically, the British people are responsible for as avid consumers of Americana (here it’s worth noting that Porridge was launched in the same year that the first McDonald’s ‘restaurant’ opened in Britain).

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Another irony is that since the Beatles, the value that the British place on their cultural products is often related to how successful they become in the United States, rather like a jealous man seeking approval from his more successful friend. At other times there is a parochial pride in cultural products that are lost in translation. Porridge is one of them. Unlike The Office, it didn’t inspire a successful version in the United States. Yet the show has retained a huge, multigenerational audience that crosses time rather than space, and that includes several generations of British comic actors and writers. The verdict of Monty Python’s Eric Idle is typical: They’re writing like Dickens, they’re writing true characters who are found on the streets, who are recognizable, and putting them on television; and that’s just fabulous … [Porridge] is one of the funniest things ever written and it just makes me happy to watch them again.12

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The popular stand up comedian Josh Widdicombe – forty years younger than Idle and born six years after the last episode was broadcast – says ‘It is the perfect British sitcom … it is the bar that every other sitcom is trying to reach, and failing.’13 Perhaps the show’s greatest legacy is not to be found in film or television but in the real world of prison that inspired it in the first place. Porridge continues to resonate with prisoners and prison officers today. Memoirs of life inside have become a minor literary genre since Jonathan Marshall’s How to Survive in the Nick helped Clement and La Frenais devise the show. Works in this genre nearly all see Porridge both as a way for the public to understand prison better and as a survival guide for those who are in jail for the first time. One example is Frankie Owens’s The Little Book of Prison: A Beginners Guide (2012), which starts with a dedication to Ronnie Barker. Another is Jonathan Robinson’s In It, where archetypal inmates are relayed to the reader through Porridge characters. An old man who Robinson helps by obtaining a book of poetry from the prison library

The legacy of Porridge

is located in his mind as ‘Blanco’, while a legendarily tough officer is ‘an iconic Mackay’.14 Situations as well as characters are understood in terms of this sitcom: like Slade’s inmates, Robinson hoarded food he’d stolen from the prison kitchen and used it as a trading currency, recalling: ‘Rod was asked if he wanted the surplus stockpiled sachets of porridge that are not my cup of tea, which I have been squirreling. His reply was right out of the pages of Clement and La Frenais: I don’t like Porridge porridge.’15 The author’s first night was experienced in relation to the sitcom: ‘“This is Robinson”, said the officer holding the door open. I entered and said in as friendly way as possible: “I’m Jon”. The door then slammed behind me. The same slam as on Porridge’s opening credits.’ Robinson continues: Stevie stuck his hand out and said ‘Hello mate’ and grinned … I like Stevie immediately. Maybe I’m not going to die tonight … He surprises me by saying the top [bed] is mine. In Porridge I thought the more senior man got the upper berth … He recognizes from my demeanour that I’ve not been ‘In’ before. He then says, in a totally non-confrontational way ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ I’ve been a tit. Before he lets me continue, he makes me sit down. ‘The first thing we are going to do is eat.’ Then I can tell him ‘all about it.’ It dawns on me that I have struck lucky. I have landed on my feet. It is obvious to me that Stevie is going to be my Fletcher and I his Godber.16

‘Watching Porridge on the “inside” is absolutely unreal’ wrote Robinson17 – not least because there is humour to be found in jail: ‘15.30: Am still in the company of Norman Stanley Fletcher. At the same time, I have done what only I could do. I have accidentally locked myself in my cell. I hope someone notices my absence before supper, or I will have to hit the “emergency” button (Room Service).’ Inaccuracies are pointed out: Robinson discovered that the term for those you share a cell with is ‘Padmates’ and not ‘Cellies’ as Porridge had led him to believe. Some accounts of prison life also warn

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that the show is not a documentary to be trusted with your survival. In Prison On An L Plate, for example, Dan Angiolini wrote: Prisons are not the ‘holiday camps’ that the tabloids would have the taxpayers believe. But neither are they as dangerous, violent and miserable as those depicted on TV and film. Indeed, UK prisons are probably among the least unpleasant in the developed world, certainly when compared to American jails. In a sentence, they are not as miserable as the borstal depicted in the grim 1970s film Scum, but nor are they as jovial as the fictional HMP Slade prison familiar to anyone who has seen the TV series Porridge starring Ronnie Barker!18

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Just as Porridge also appealed to middle- and upper-class viewers, so it’s not just ex-prisoners from poor social backgrounds who testify to its resonance. Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative cabinet minister was jailed for perjury in 1999 before becoming a penal reformer and Christian activist. Aitken’s memoir of that time is called Porridge and Passion and in an interview with the author he praised the show: In prison you need a sense of humour and people sort of ham up their positions: old lags, certain kinds of prison officers; and there’s a kind of comic opera side of prison which is just there and it’s real, but I’m afraid it’s a small part of the picture. The big picture is that it is an extraordinary sad and depressing place because if you are inside it you know that 75 per cent of the people you are in with are going to be back inside soon with even more hopeless lives, with even less chance of going straight. So we need to pitch in at a better level than Porridge. But I wouldn’t knock Porridge, it’s useful and I’ve enjoyed it as much as anyone.19

Perhaps the greatest testament to the show’s influence is that in 2003 the British government used Porridge to give prisoners advice. The suicide rate in British prisons is five times the national average and

The legacy of Porridge

in an attempt to address this, the Home Office asked Ronnie Barker to reprise the role one last time. As Fletcher, he voiced a new touchscreen information service designed to help anxious new prisoners adjust to life inside, using a dose of the old lag’s accompanying wit to make them feel that the advice was from one of their own and not from officials. It was a success, according to the governor of Pentonville, Gareth Davies: ‘[The suicide rate was high] because we didn’t have the time or staff to talk to them ourselves. In the year this system was introduced there were no suicides in Pentonville.’ The rate continued to improve: from 2004 to 2010 the annual number of inmates killing themselves fell from 130 per 100,000 to 58.20 Of course Porridge has not significantly improved conditions for inmates. Although a prison-building programme began in the 1980s, Britain’s jails remain overcrowded. In some respects the system has got worse since Porridge was broadcast. Despite reports urging penal reform (like that which Jonathan Aitken wrote for the Centre for Social Justice in 2009),21 funding for rehabilitation has been cut since the British began to follow the American model of privatizing the ‘economy of suspended rights’ in the 1980s. This system tends to view prisoners as ‘unit costs’ and so places short-term profit above cutting recidivism, for the corporate benefit of what some authors call ‘the prison-industrial complex’.22 Yet there is evidence that Porridge has improved relations between officers, inmates and their families. It has certainly improved public understanding of prison life. It is not ‘cinéma vérité’ or ‘docudrama’. It is comedy drama. But it’s the best source that people with no experience of prison have yet been provided with. The criminal turned columnist, Erwin James, assessed the show’s importance in an article to mark the death of Ronnie Barker in 2005: The conflict between Fletcher and Officer Mackay was about the most authentic depiction ever of the true relationship that exists between prisoners and prison officers in British jails up and down the country. I’m not sure how,

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but writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais understood that it is almost the duty of a prisoner to best the landing officer, the cleaning officer, the workshop officer. Somehow they tapped into the otherwise impenetrable world of imprisonment and brought it to life with sparkling dialogue and cracking story lines. They grasped the notion that it is the minor victories against the naturally oppressive prison system that makes life bearable.

Trainee officers say that the show’s archetypes still help them to manage different sorts of prisoners and that it increased the practice of placing responsible older inmates in cells with younger ones in order to mentor them.23 Officers also feel that it represents them fairly. Garry Morton, who worked at HMP Brixton where Fletcher was once ‘held’ said: ‘it’s the only show that has ever shown the industry in a good light, of sorts. It’s certainly the nearest thing to the actual job.’ Morton continues: Many programmes are made in support of the police, hospitals, fire brigade 154

and ambulance service – and if there’s anything that makes a prison officer proud about the job he or she loves, it’s every time Porridge is on TV. Even today, new recruits look upon it a symbol of everything that’s good about the job; and, although it’s out of date in many respects, it’s still a good reference. In Porridge, there’s no scandal or deep-rooted bad feeling, which every other programme about prison seems to show with enthusiasm. I remember a few years ago … we hung a photo of Mr Mackay in our landing office. One of the officers faked a signature on it with the comment, ‘To all my friends at Brixton – bang ’em up!’ Everyone loved it, including the prisoners – a few of them wanted a copy to put in their cells.24

Comedy often alleviates or masks fears and conflicts in the society it represents. Porridge may have enabled viewers to avoid confronting the socioeconomic causes of some criminal acts, the harsh realities of punitive incarceration and its ineffectiveness in rehabilitating offenders.

The legacy of Porridge

But all great comedy with mass appeal enters the cultural lexicon of a nation and becomes a cipher of situations found in everyday life. Thus, Dad’s Army became the story of the Home Guard in the folk memory of Britain. Porridge has become prison for the British whether or not they are criminals and whether or not they get caught. When the Prince of Wales visited Cardiff Prison in 1979, Charles asked young inmates how much life inside was like the TV series. ‘Very different’, replied one man serving two years for burglary. It didn’t matter. ‘His Royal Highness the Prince of Porridge’, was the headline of the day.25 There are few television programmes in any country, at any time, which can claim to have become almost synonymous with the aspect of human life on which their comedy or drama are based. As Fletcher says to Mr Mackay on the day of his release, ‘You and me equal now, right?’

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Notes Introduction 1

2 3 4 5

Richard Webber, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide (Headline, 2005), p. 44. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 81. David Walliams, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 26 May 2014.

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2

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Clement and La Frenais, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 1, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 24 May 2014. Hannibal Brooks (United Artists, 1969) was directed by Michael Winner and scripted by Clement and La Frenais. A moderate success, its eponymous hero is a POW put to work in Munich Zoo. When the zoo is bombed by the Allies, Brooks (Oliver Reed) escapes with an Asian elephant in tow and heads to the Swiss border. The film was broadcast at 6.35 pm on 31 August 1974 on BBC1’s prestigious ‘Saturday Night At The Movies’ slot, five days before the first episode. Barry Took, ‘The Men Who Put Barker Behind Bars’, Radio Times, vol. 204, no. 2651, 31 August–6 September 1974.

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Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 38. 5 Dick Clement, interview with the author, 2 July 2012. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Barker told the Radio Times in 1974, ‘I’d love to do a series based on that’ (Took, ‘The Men Who Put Barker Behind Bars’), hoping that if Porridge worked he might be able to develop I’ll fly You for A Quid. A decade later, it was eventually made into a BBC sitcom as The Magnificent Evans, but after one series of six episodes (screened between 6 September and 11 October 1984) it was not recommissioned – thereby vindicating the BBC’s original decision. 9 Richard Webber, Porridge: The Best Scenes, Jokes and One-Liners (HarperCollins E-books, 2008), loc. 142. 10 Hugh Carleton Greene (1910–87) was director general of the BBC from 1960 to 1969. A brother of the novelist Graham Greene, he was vilified by conservatives for encouraging a decline in public morality. Others regard him as the father of post-Reithian public service broadcasting, combining Reith’s mission to educate and inform with a populist approach to entertainment. 11 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 196.

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12 Ibid., p. 480. Diary entry for 4 September 1974. Williams and Barker were both represented by Peter Eade. 13 Ibid. 14 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 63. 15 David Jason, My Life (Century, 2013), p. 239. 16 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 88. 17 Ibid., p. 1. 18 A shot of Fletcher walking to his cell was added later in the series but he is grim-faced, thus retaining the realistic tone of the opening titles. 19 Porridge [DVD], series 1, episode 1, passim (BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2001). 20 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 1. 21 Ibid., p. 12. 22 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 23 Robin Lustig, ‘Locked in Laughter’, Observer, 22 April 1979. 24 The show’s executive producer, Jimmy Gilbert, who had connections to Jonathan Marshall, put the three men in touch. 25 Along with Ireland’s Brendan Behan (1923–64), England’s Frank Norman (1930–80) was the most celebrated of the mid-twentieth-century prison writers. After serving three years in jail on the Isle of Wight he became a denizen of London’s bohemian intelligentsia that gathered around Soho, Norman was discovered by the poet Stephen Spender and endorsed by the great American crime writer Raymond Chandler, who wrote a foreword to Bang To Rights. His reputation faded after his early death, but he continues to stand out among

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the pulp fiction of prison writing, which usually celebrates violent crime. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p.13. Ibid., pp. 13–14. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 27. Among previous commissions, Harris had worked on the ITV sitcom Mind Your Language, which used crude ethnic and national stereotypes as the basis of its humour. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 19. Ian La Frenais, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 2, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 25 May 2014. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 44. Ibid., p. 25. ‘Porridge? It May Be Banned in the Nick’, The People, 12 January 1975. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, pp. 37–38. Guardian, 6 September 1974. Shaun Usher, ‘It’s All the Fun of the Jail’, Daily Mail, 4 October 1974. BBCWAC/R9/7, Audience survey for ‘Poetic Justice’, 21 March 1977. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 190. James Murray, ‘Two-way Stretch’, Daily Express, 24 December 1975. ‘Porridge Goes Down a Treat in Jail’, News of the World, 29 May 1977. Erwin James, ‘Doing Time With Porridge’, Guardian, 5 October 2005. ‘Porridge? It May Be Banned in the Nick’.

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Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 10. Ibid., p. 323. Andrew Adonis and Stephen Pollard, A Class Act: The Myth of Britain’s Classless Society (Headline, 1997), pp. 3–4. A. H. Halsey (ed.), British Social Trends Since 1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), p. 637. Burglary declined after the 1990s mainly because most consumer goods became so affordable that their resale value was negligible. James Banks, Richard Blundell, Antione Bozio and Carl Emmerson, ‘Releasing Jobs for the Young? Early Retirement and Youth Unemployment in the United Kingdom’, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Working Paper W10/02 (2008), p. 11. Gavin Berman and Aliyah Dar, ‘Prison Population Statistics’, SN/SG/4334, House of Commons Library, 29 July 2013. BBCWAC/R9/7, Audience survey, 25 August 1977. Robert J. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1936–87: A Social History as Seen through the Gallup Data (Macmillan, 1989), pp. 104 and 125. This was the first major opinion poll on the causes of crime. Another, taken eight years later in 1981 showed a similar explanation, although unemployment now came a close second as a factor in rising crime, reflecting public disquiet about the effects of Mrs Thatcher’s monetarism.

10 Usher, ‘It’s All the Fun of the Jail’. 11 Ian La Frenais, interview with the author, 17 August, 2013. 12 Dick Clement, interview with the author, 2 July 2012. 13 James, ‘Doing Time With Porridge’. 14 Jonathan Marshall, How To Survive In The Nick (Allison and Busby, 1974), p. 40. 15 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 37. 16 Ibid., pp. 34–36. 17 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin, 1991), p. 11. 18 Although ‘slopping out’ was officially abolished in 1998, as of 2015 it continues in twenty of the oldest Victorian prisons, where the cost of fitting proper sanitation is seen to be prohibitive. See ‘Still Slopping Out’, inside time: the National Newspaper for Prisoners and Detainees, May 2015. 19 Marshall, How To Survive In The Nick, p. 100. 20 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 112. 21 Ibid., p. 139. 22 Marshall, How To Survive In The Nick, p. 40. 23 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 376. 24 Ibid., p. 126. 25 Dick Clement, interview with the author, 2 July 2012. 26 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 80.

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Ibid., p. 200. Ibid., pp. 308–309. Ibid., pp. 376–7. Ibid., p. 332. Ibid., pp. 45–46. Steve Chibnall, ‘Ordinary People: New Wave realism and the British crime film 1959–1963’, in Steve Chibnall and Robert Murphy (eds), British Crime Cinema (Routledge, 1999), p. 103. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 319. Ibid., p. 320. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., pp. 320–1. Ibid., p. 335. James, ‘Doing Time With Porridge’. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 224. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 19. Webber, Porridge: The Best Scenes, loc 1047. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 158. Webber, Porridge: The Best Scenes, loc. 771. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 138. Russell Davies (ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries (HarperCollins, 1994), p. 505. Diary entry for 24 December 1975. Williams had just watched the first of two 45-minute ‘Christmas Specials’ that were produced. ‘No Way Out’ had Fletcher and others trying to break out of Slade.

47 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 264. 48 Ibid., p. 267. 49 See Jeffrey Archer, A Prison Diary: Volume 1 – Hell (Pan, 2003) and two subsequent volumes, Purgatory (Pan, 2004) and Heaven (Pan, 2005). 50 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 269. 51 BBCWAC/R9/7, ‘Poetic Justice’, Audience survey, 21 March 1977. 52 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 295. 53 Ibid., p. 90. 54 Mary Malone, ‘Getting the Bird Just for Laughs’, Daily Mirror, 20 September 1974. 55 Usher, ‘It’s All the Fun of the Jail’. 56 See Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, pp. 76–77. 57 Ibid., p. 80. 58 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 11. 59 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 129. 60 Lustig, ‘Locked in Laughter’.

Chapter 3 1

Between 1971 and 1991, nuclear families ceased to be the most common form of household, coming third after unmarried couples and people living alone. See Brian Harrison, Finding A Role: The United

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Kingdom 1970–1990 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 221–5. Sydney Lotterby, interviewed in Comedy Connections, BBC2, tx: 10 October 2010. Phil Wickham, ‘Porridge (1974–77)’, BFI screenonline, 2003–14. Available online: http://www.screenonline.org. uk/tv/id/462748/index.html (accessed 21 July 2019). Studies show that gangs in all cultures tend to be self-protecting and self-validating alternative families for young men and women with absent or dysfunctional parents. See, for example, Susie Daniel and Pete McGuire, The Paint House (1972). Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 156. Ibid., p. 167. Ibid., p. 147. Dick Clement, interview with the author 2 July 2012. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 73. Ibid., p. 85. Judy Beckinsale, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 2, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 25 May 2014. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 390. Ibid., p. 245. Lara Natale, ‘Education in Prisons’, CIVITAS Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2010. Sam Kelly (1943–2014) was a Mancunian comic actor who also appeared in two Carry On films and in the first three series of the BBC sitcom ‘Allo, ‘Allo! in which he played a

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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German Officer, Hans Geering. Sydney Lotterby recommended him for the part of Warren because he’d worked with him on an episode of The Liver Birds. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 125. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 81. Ibid., pp. 27–28. Ibid., p. 124. Ibid., p. 57. James, A Life Inside, pp. 5–6. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 78. Ibid., p. 258. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 132. Ibid., p. 128. Ibid., p. 170. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 162. Patricia Brake, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 2, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 25 May 2014. Penny Summerfield, ‘Women in Britain since 1945: Companionate Marriage and the Double Burden’, in James Obelkevich and Peter Catterall (eds) Understanding Post-War British Society (Routledge, 1994), p. 67.

Chapter 4 1

Andy Medhurst, A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities (Routledge, 2007), p. 48.

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Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 35. Webber, Porridge: The Best Scenes, loc.517. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 126. Ibid., p. 138. Ibid., p. 66. Kenneth Williams, The Kenneth Williams Diaries, edited by Russell Davies (HarperCollins, 1994), 3 April 1968. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 142. Ibid., p. 74. Medhurst, A National Joke, p. 112. Ian La Frenais, interview with the author, 17 August 2013. Ibid. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 137. Robert J. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1936–87: A Social History as Seen through the Gallup Data (Macmillan, 1989), p. 116. ‘Porridge Fans Accuse BBC of Editing Gay Slur’, Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007. Tony Osoba, interview with the author, 8 August 2014. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 107. See Mike Marqusee, Anyone But England: An Outsider Looks at English Cricket (Aurum, 2005). Kyle Onstott’s Mandingo (1957) was an international bestseller praised for its graphic account of American slavery, it has also been criticized

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for its salacious portrayal of sexual relations between white men and black women. Paramount’s 1975 film version of the novel, starring the British actors James Mason and Susan George, would have been familiar to audiences by the time this episode was broadcast in 1977. Described by the critic Roger Ebert as ‘racist trash’, it too was a commercial success. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, pp. 242–3. Rising Damp was the highest rated ITV sitcom in the 2004 poll of the top 100 British sitcoms, coming 27th, the same poll in which Porridge came 7th. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 103. Ibid., p. 112. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 108. Ibid., pp. 40–1. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., p. 157. Ibid., p. 180. Gavin Berman and Aliyah Dar, ‘Prison Population Statistics’, House of Commons Library, Note SN/SG/4334, 29 July 2013. Between 2002 and 2012 there was a doubling of prisoners aged over sixty and a fall in the number of juvenile offenders, but they remain a minority. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 153. Peter Jeffrey (1929–2000) appeared in a number of film and television dramas in the 1970s and 80s, initially making his name playing Philip II of Spain in the lavish 1971 BBC drama Elizabeth R.

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33 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 182. 34 Ibid. 35 Tony Osoba, interview with the author, 8 August 2014. 36 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 381.

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The future film producer Rob Reiner also worked on All in the Family, taking the part of Michael Stivic, the American counterpart of Tony Booth’s character, Alf Garnett’s left-wing sonin-law, Mike Rawlins. John Rich’s other success was the sitcom Benson. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 56. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 9. Dick Clement, interview with the author, 2 July 2012. By the early twenty-first century, 58 per cent of the American prison population was African or Hispanic American alone, whereas in Britain the total for all ethnic minorities was 26 per cent – still higher than the overall proportion of minorities in the UK (14 per cent) but half that of the American figure. See ‘Racial Disparity’, The Sentencing Project, 2013. Available online: http://www.sentencingproject. org/template/page.cfm?id=122 (accessed 1 June 2014). More than

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two-thirds of those incarcerated in the United States for drug offences are black males. On The Rocks, series 1, episode 1 (ABC), tx: 11 September 1975. Dick Clement, interview with the author, 2 July 2012. See Graham McCann, Dad’s Army: The Story of a Classic Television Show (4th Estate, 2002), p. 203. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 195. Ian La Frenais, interview with the author, 17 August 2013. Dick Clement, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 26 May 2014. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 195. Ibid., p. 194. Dick Clement, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 26 May 2014. Ian La Frenais, interviewed for Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 26 May 2014.

Chapter 6 1

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Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 179. Lustig, ‘Locked in Laughter’. Beckinsale, Vaughan and Clement interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, tx: 26 May 2014.

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Geoffrey Bayldon (b.1924), turned down the opportunity to be the first and second Dr Who but had a long career in British film and television from 1952 to 2010. At the time, he was familiar to Britons as the star of the children’s show, Catweazle (1970–2). Clement and La Frenais could not remember the reason why they left Lukewarm out of the film when the author questioned them in 2014. Osoba had got a more prominent role in the sitcom Charles Endell Esquire that required his presence away from the Porridge set. Dick Clement (dir.), Porridge (Black Lion Films, 1979). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Philip Locke replaced Eric Dodson in the role of Banyard for the film version. Clement, Porridge. The five completed episodes of Bloomers, by James Saunders, were aired on BBC2 later in the year. Ian La Frenais, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, Comedy Gold, 26 May 2014. Guardian, 19 July 1979; New Statesman, 27 July 1979; Evening Standard, 19 July 1979; Daily Mail, 20 July 1979 and Daily Express, 21 July 1979. See, for example, Richard Luck, ‘Reviews: Porridge’, Film4. Available online: http://www.film4.com/ reviews/1979/porridge (accessed 11 October 2014), who described it as ‘the best ever sitcom-to-big-screen adaptation’.

Chapter 7 1

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Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 355. BBCWAC/R9/7, Audience survey, 25 August 1977. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 67. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 45. ‘Thick As Thieves’, British Comedy Guide. Available online: http://www. comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/thick_as_thieves (accessed 17 October 2014). Frank Norman, ‘Coming Out’, Radio Times, vol. 218, no. 2832, 18–24 February 1978. Going Straight [DVD] (BBC Worldwide, 2004), episode 1, ‘Going Home’, tx: 24 February 1978, Officer Kirby to Fletcher on the day of his release. Fletcher to Maclaren, Going Straight, episode 1, ‘Going Home’, tx: 24 February 1978. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 205. Ibid., p. 199. Ingrid to Fletcher, Going Straight, episode 2, ‘Going To Be Alright’, tx: 3 March 1978. Ibid. Fletcher to Ingrid, Going Straight, episode 3, ‘Going Sour’, tx: 10 March 1978. Godber to Fletcher, Going Straight, episode 2, ‘Going To Be Alright’, tx: 3 March 1978. Ian La Frenais, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, 23 May 2014.

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16 Patricia Brake, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, 23 May 2014. 17 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, pp. 206–7. 18 Ibid., p. 337. 19 Ibid., p. 219. 20 Rowena Cooper (b.1935), rose to prominence around the time she appeared in Going Straight, through her role in John Mortimer’s popular ITV drama about a barrister, Rumpole of the Bailey (1975–92). 21 Fletcher to Mrs Chapman, Going Straight, episode 4, ‘Going To Work’, tx: 17 March 1978. 22 Going Straight, episode 6, ‘Going Off the Rails’, tx: 7 April 1978. 23 Godber to Fletcher, Going Straight, episode 6, ‘Going Off the Rails’, tx: 7 April 1978. 24 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, 204–205. 25 Tony Osoba, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, 23 May 2014. 26 Sean Day-Lewis, Daily Telegraph, 25 February 1978. 27 BBCWAC, R9/7, Going Straight, Audience Survey, 10 March 1978. 28 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 205.

Chapter 8 1

A pilot episode of the new Porridge was broadcast in the BBC’s 2016 Landmark Sitcom season before the series was aired in October and

November 2017. Most reviews were justly critical; see, for example, Sam Wollaston, ‘Send for the Sitcom Police’. 2 Tony Osoba, interview with the author, 8 August 2014. 3 Ian La Frenais, interview with the author, 17 August 2013. 4 Tony Osoba, interview with the author, 8 August 2014. 5 Michael Palin, Diaries, 1969–1979: The Python Years (Orion, 2010), entry for 10 June 1976. The author ruefully noted, however, that ‘in the rest of the country [Python came] nowhere’. He had read the figures, compiled by the Joint Industry Committee for Television Advertising Research [JICTAR], in the Stage. 6 Porridge: Inside Out, Part 1, Comedy Gold channel, tx: 21 May 2014, to mark the 40th anniversary of the series first being aired. 7 See Steve Clark, Only Fools and Horses: The Official Inside Story (Splendid Books, 2011), loc 625–55. 8 Guardian, 23 April 2011. The remark comparing Sullivan to Dickens was made by Mark Freeland, then BBC Head of Comedy. 9 Shappi Khorsandi interviewed in Sam Leith, ‘Is British Humour Dead?’, Prospect, December 2011. 10 Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 46. 11 Turner, Crisis? What Crisis?, p. 32. Britons still watch a lot of TV but it’s a more atomized experience than before due to media fragmentation. For example, a 2012 Blinkbox survey found that Britons watched on average

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24.5 hours of TV per week. See Daily Mail, 29 November 2012. Eric Idle, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, 23 May 2014. Josh Widdicombe, interviewed in Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3, 23 May 2014. Jonathan Robinson, In It (Amazon Kindle, 2013), loc. 1941. Actually, when Robinson meets the ‘iconic Mackay’ of his imagination, the officer turns out to be rather more like the seedily officious ‘Butler from On The Buses’ – but the point stands that it is largely through sitcom characters that these archetypes are understood in real life. Robinson, In It, loc. 3271. Ibid., loc. 338. Ibid., loc. 339. Foreword to Dan Angiolini, Prison On An L Plate: A Beginner’s Guide For the First Timer (Amazon Kindle, 2014). Jonathan Aitken, interview with the author for BBC Radio 4 Analysis, ‘No Escape’, tx: 1 June 2009. See also Aitken, Porridge and Passion: An Autobiography (Continuum, 2006). Suicide in English and Welsh prisons is five times the national rate for each country. [Source as is]. In Scottish prisons the rate is ten times higher. See

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Chris Marshall, ‘Suicide rate in Scottish prisons higher than previous estimates’, The Scotsman, 23 May 2019. Aitken’s Locked Up Potential: A Strategy to Reform our Prisons and Rehabilitate our Prisons was published in March 2009. See the Observer, 22 March 2009. See, for example, Trevor Jones and Tim Newburn, ‘The Convergence of US and UK Crime Control Policy’, in Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks (eds), Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimensions of Crime Control (Routledge, 2012), pp. 123–151. In 2014, the British government announced its controversial plan to extend the privatization of the penal system by putting the probation service out to tender. See Guardian, 29 October 2014. See, for example, Officer George Forder, interviewed in Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 186. Webber, Clement and La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide, p. 189. His Royal Highness the Prince of Porridge’, Daily Mail, 20 July 1979.

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Adonis, Andrew, and Stephen Pollard, A Class Act: The Myth of Britain’s Classless Society (Headline, 1997). Aitken, Jonathan, Porridge and Passion: An Autobiography (Continuum, 2006). Angiolini, Dan, Prison On An L Plate: A Beginner’s Guide For the First Timer (Amazon Kindle, 2014). Archer, Jeffrey, A Prison Diary: Volume 1 – Hell (Pan, 2003). Archer, Jeffrey, A Prison Diary: Volume 2 – Purgatory (Pan, 2004). Archer, Jeffrey, A Prison Diary: Volume 3 – Heaven (Pan, 2005). Banks, James, Richard Blundell, Antonie Bozio and Carl Emmerson, ‘Releasing Jobs for the Young? Early Retirement and Youth Unemployment in the United Kingdom’, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Working Paper W10/02 (2008). Chibnall, Steve, and Murphy, Robert (eds), British Crime Cinema (Routledge, 1999). Clark, Steve, Only Fools and Horses: The Official Inside Story (Splendid Books, 2011). Clement, Dick,(dir.) Porridge (Black Lion Films, 1979). Comedy Connections (BBC2), tx: 10 October 2010. Daily Mail, 29 November 2012. Davies, Russell (ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries (HarperCollins, 1994). Day-Lewis, Sean, Daily Telegraph, 25 February 1978. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin, 1991).

Going Straight [DVD] (BBC Worldwide, 2004). Guardian, 23 April 2011. Guardian, 29 October 2014. Halsey, A. H. (ed.), British Social Trends Since 1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988). Harrison, Brian, Finding A Role: The United Kingdom 1970–1990 (Oxford University Press, 2010). James, Erwin, A Life Inside: A Prisoner’s Notebook (Atlantic Book, 2003). James, Erwin, ‘Doing Time With Porridge’, Guardian, 5 October 2005. Jason, David, My Life (Century, 2013). Leith, Sam, ‘Is British Humour Dead?’, Prospect, December 2011. Luck, Richard, ‘Review: Porridge’, Film4. Available online: http://www.film4.com/ reviews/1979/porridge (accessed 11 October, 2014). Lustig, Robin, ‘Locked in Laughter’, Observer, 22 April 1979. Malone, Mary, ‘Getting the Bird Just for Laughs’, Daily Mirror, 20 September 1974. Marqusee, Mike, Anyone But England: An Outsider Looks at English Cricket (Aurum, 2005). Marshall, Jonathan, How To Survive in the Nick (Allison & Busby, 1974). McCann, Graham, Dad’s Army: The Story of a Classic Television Show (4th Estate, 2002). Medhurst, Andy, A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities (Routledge, 2007).

B ibliography

Murray, James, ‘Two-way Stretch’, Daily Express, 24 December 1975. Natale, Lara, ‘Education in Prisons’, CIVITAS Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2010. Newburn, Tim, and Richard Sparks (eds), Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimensions of Crime Control (Routledge, 2012). Norman, Frank, ‘Coming Out’, Radio Times, vol. 218, no. 2832, 18–24 February 1978. Norman, Frank, Lock ’em Up and Count ’em (Charles Knight, 1970). Obelkevich, James, and Peter Caterall (eds), Understanding Post-War British Society (Routledge, 1994). Observer, 22 March 2009. On The Rocks (ABC, 1975). Palin, Michael, Diaries, 1969–1979: The Python Years (Orion, 2010). ‘Peter Fiddick’, Guardian, 6 September 1974. Porridge [DVD] (BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2001). ‘Porridge Fans Accuse BBC of Editing Gay Slur’, Daily Telegraph, 15 June 2007. ‘Porridge Goes Down a Treat in Jail’, News of the World, 29 May 1977. Porridge: Inside Out, Part 1 (Comedy Gold channel), tx: 24 May 2014. Porridge: Inside Out, Part 2 (Comedy Gold channel), tx: 25 May 2014. Porridge: Inside Out, Part 3 (Comedy Gold channel), tx: 26 May 2014. ‘Porridge? It May Be Banned in the Nick’, The People, 12 January 1975. ‘Prison Suicide Rate in England and Wales Fell in 2010’, BBC News, 2 January 2011. Available online: http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-12104241 (accessed 29 August 2014).

‘Racial Disparity’, The Sentencing Project, 2013. Available online: http://www. sentencingproject.org/template/page. cfm?id=122 (accessed 1 June 2014). Robinson, Jonathan, In It (Amazon Kindle, 2013). ‘Still Slopping Out’, inside time: the National Newspaper for Prisoners and Detainees, May 2015. ‘Thick As Thieves’, British Comedy Guide. Available online: http://www.comedy. co.uk/guide/tv/thick_as_thieves (accessed 17 October 2014). Took, Barry, ‘The Men Who Put Barker Behind Bars’, Radio Times, vol. 204, no. 2651, 31 August – 6 September 1974. Turner, Alwyn W., Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (Aurum, 2008). Usher, Shaun, ‘It’s All the Fun of the Jail’, Daily Mail, 4 October 1974. Webber, Richard, Porridge: The Best Scenes, Jokes and One-Liners (HarperCollins E-books, 2008). Webber, Richard, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Porridge: The Complete Scripts and Series Guide (Headline, 2005). Wickham, Phil, ‘Porridge (1974–77)’, BFI screenonline, 2003–14. Available online: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/ tv/id/462748/index.html (accessed 21 July 2019). Williams, Kenneth, The Kenneth Williams Diaries, edited by Russell Davies (HarperCollins, 1994). Wollaston, Sam, ‘Send for the Sitcom Police’. Wybrow, Robert J., Britain Speaks Out, 1936–87: A Social History as Seen through the Gallup Data (Macmillan, 1989).

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Credits Porridge United Kingdom / 1973–1977 one ‘pilot’ episode, three series, two Christmas specials Prisoner and Escort series 1, episode 2 of Seven of One (1st shown on Sunday, 1 April 1973; 20.15–20.45) (28m 30s)

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Production Company BBC Colour ©1973. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Alan Featherstone Film Editor Ray Millichope Design Tim Gleeson Music Max Harris Crew Executive Producer James Gilbert Lighting Peter Smee

Costume Penny Lowe Make-up Penny Delamar Sound Mike McCarthy Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Hamish Roughead prison guard series one New Faces, Old Hands (1st shown on Thursday, 5 September 1974; 20.30–21.00) (29m 1s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Len Newson Film Editor Geoffrey Botterill

Designer Tim Gleeson Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Tony [Anthony] Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt Technical Adviser Jonathan Marshall Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Brian Glover Cyril Heslop John Bennett medical officer Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables

Credits

The Hustler (1st shown on Thursday, 12 September 1974; 20.30–21.00) (28m 46s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Len Newson Designer Tim Gleeson Film Editor Geoffrey Botterill Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt Technical Adviser Jonathan Marshall Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough

Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Brian Glover Cyril Heslop Ken Jones Bernard ‘Horrible’ Ives Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood Ray Dunbobbin Evans Graham Ashley Mr. Appleton John Quarmby prison officer A Night In (1st shown on Thursday, 19 September 1974; 20.30–21.00) (30m 43s). Billed in Radio Times as An Evening In Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Len Newson Design David Chandler Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris

Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt Technical Adviser Jonathan Marshall Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Paul McDowell Mr. Collinson A Day Out (1st shown on Thursday, 26 September 1974; 20.30–21.00) (29m 19s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Keith Taylor Design Gerry Scott Film Editor Ray Millichope

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Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt Technical Adviser Jonathan Marshall

170

Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Ken Jones Bernard ‘Horrible’ Ives Paul Angelis Navy Rum Philip Jackson Melvin ‘Dylan’ Bottomley Robert Gillespie vicar John Rutland verger Johnny Wade scrounger Arnold Peters chief prison officer Ralph Watson landlord Peggy Mason nurse

Ways and Means (1st shown on Thursday, 3 October 1974; 20.30– 21.00) (28m 28s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Keith Taylor Design Tim Gleeson Gerry Scott Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay

Ken Jones Bernard ‘Horrible’ Ives Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Men without Women (1st shown on Thursday, 10 October 1974; 20.30– 21.00) (28m 51s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1974. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Len Newson Design Tim Gleeson David Chandler Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Mary Husband Make-up Sylvia James Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Ray Butt

Credits

Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Brian Glover Cyril Heslop Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood Royston Tickner Sergeant Norris Emlyn Price Tolly June Ellis Isobel Fletcher Patricia Brake Ingrid Fletcher Susan Littler Norma Andonia Katsaros Iris Rosalind Elliot Elaine series two Just Desserts (1st shown on Friday, 24 October 1975; 20.30– 21.00) (28m 44s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC

Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Design Tim Gleeson Music Max Harris

Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood Eric Dodson Mr. Banyard Graham Ashley Mr. Appleton John Rudling Mr. Birchwood

Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Anne [Ann] Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Dave Perrottet

Heartbreak Hotel (1st shown on Friday, 31 October 1975; 20.30– 21.00) (29m 2s)

uncredited Film Editor Ray Millichope Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Ken Jones Bernard ‘Horrible’ Ives Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren

Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Ken Willicombe Design Jon Pusey Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Ann Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot

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Production Assistant Dave Perrottet Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Patricia Brake Ingrid Fletcher Maggie Flint Mrs. Godber

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Disturbing the Peace (1st shown on Friday, 7 November 1975; 20.30–21.00) (29m 9s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Ken Willicombe Design Jon Pusey Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris

Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Ann Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Dave Perrottet Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Peter Jeffrey Mr. ‘Napper’ Wainwright Philip Madoc Williams Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Madge Hindle Mrs. Hesketh, the Governor’s secretary No Peace for the Wicked (1st shown on 14 November 1975; 20.30–21.00) (28m 28s)

Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Ken Willicombe Design Jon Pusey Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Ann Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Dave Perrottet Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay David Jason Blanco Webb Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren

Credits

Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Eric Dodson Mr. Banyard Ivor Roberts prison visitor Barbara New prison visitor Geoffrey Greenhill prison visitor Paul McDowell Mr. Collinson Tony Aitken chaplain uncredited Dick Clement Ian La Frenais (men waiting outside Fletcher’s cell) Happy Release (1st shown on Friday, 21 November 1975; 20.30–21.00) (28m 37s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Ken Willicombe Design Jon Pusey

Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Ann Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Dave Perrottet Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber David Jason Blanco Webb Colin Farrell Norris Terence Soall medical officer Paul McDowell Mr. Collinson The Harder They Fall (1st shown on Friday, 28 November 1975; 20.30–21.00) (28m 43s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC

Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman Kenneth MacMillan Design Jon Pusey Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Brian Clemett Costume Betty Aldiss Make-up Ann Ailes Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Dave Perrottet Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Peter Vaughan Harry Grout Cyril Shaps Jackdaw Roy Sampson PT instructor

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Christmas special #1 No Way Out (1st shown on Wednesday, 24 December 1975; 20.25–21.10) (40m 58s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1975. BBC

174

Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John Tiley Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor Ray Millichope Music Max Harris Crew Lighting Peter Smee Costume Susan Wheal Make-up Ann Ailes Film Sound Ron Blight Sound Jeff Booth Production Assistant Alan Bell Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher

Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Peter Vaughan Harry Grout Graham Crowden prison doctor Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood Carol Hawkins Sandra Elisabeth Day nurse Christmas special #2 The Desperate Hours (1st shown on Friday, 24 December 1976; 20.00–20.40) (43m 48s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1976. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Design Tim Gleeson Videotape Editor Peter Bird Music Max Harris

Crew Lighting Sam Barclay Costume Robin Stubbs Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound Anthony Philpot Production Assistant Mike Crisp Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Dudley Sutton Reg Urwin Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Ken Wynne Keegan Michael Redfern Tulip Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Jane Wenham Mrs. Jamieson series three A Storm in a Teacup (1st shown on Friday, 18 February 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (24m 11s)

Credits

Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Geoff Higgs Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp uncredited Music Max Harris Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay

Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Peter Vaughan Harry Grout Ronald Lacey Harris Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood John Moore Spider John Dair Crusher Poetic Justice (1st shown on Friday, 25 February 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (29m 8s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Howard Dell Music Max Harris

Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Maurice Denham the Honourable Mr Justice Stephen Rawley Ronald Lacey Harris Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Paul McDowell Mr. Collinson Rough Justice (1st shown on Friday, 4 March 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (28m 39s)

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Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Geoff Higgs Music Max Harris

176

Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber

Maurice Denham the Honourable Mr Justice Stephen Rawley Ronald Lacey Harris Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Pardon Me (1st shown on Friday, 11 March 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (30m 23s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Howard Dell Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad

Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp uncredited Music Max Harris Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber David Jason Blanco Webb Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Michael Barrington Governor Geoffrey Venables Christopher Biggins Timothy ‘Lukewarm’ Underwood A Test of Character (1st shown on Friday, 18 March 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (30m 19s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC

Credits

Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Geoff Higgs Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp uncredited Music Max Harris Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber Alun Armstrong Spraggon

Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Tony Osoba Jim McLaren Final Stretch (1st shown on Friday, 25 March 1977; 20.30– 21.00) (29m 3s) Production Company BBC Colour ©1977. BBC Produced by Sydney Lotterby [Written] by Dick Clement Ian La Frenais Film Cameraman John McGlashan Design Tim Gleeson Film Editor John Dunstan Video Tape Editor Howard Dell Crew Lighting Peter Wesson Costume Mary Husband Make-up Suzanne Broad Sound John Holmes Production Assistant Mike Crisp

uncredited Music Max Harris Cast Ronnie Barker Norman Stanley Fletcher Brian Wilde Mr. Henry Barrowclough Fulton Mackay Mr. Mackay Richard Beckinsale Lennie Godber David Daker Jarvis Sam Kelly ‘Bunny’ Warren Patricia Brake Ingrid Fletcher Production Details The series’ opening credit sequence was filmed at St Albans Prison (Hertfordshire, England) and Maidstone Prison (Maidstone, Kent, England). Cell and office interiors were filmed on sets at the BBC Studios (London, England). Wider prison interiors were filmed at Ealing Studios (Ealing Green, London, England). Exteriors for series one and two were filmed at a psychiatric hospital near Watford (London, England) and for series three, an institution near Ealing (London, England).

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Notes A long-standing BBC convention was that where a programme producer was also the director, the latter credit was omitted. Thus Sydney Lotterby should be considered as director of the entirety of Porridge. A follow-up series, Going Straight, written by Clement and La Frenais and produced and directed by Sydney Lotterby, followed Barker’s ‘Fletcher’ character after he has left prison. It ran for one six-episode series on Friday evenings between 24 February and 7 April 1978.

178

A feature-film version, also called Porridge, was made in 1979 at H.M. Prison Chelmsford in Essex. Clement and La Frenais wrote the script, Clement directed and La Frenais was second unit director. Featuring most of the cast from the BBC series, it was made by Witzend Productions Ltd (London) for Black Lion Films and was released by ITC Film Distributors Ltd. It performed well at the UK box-office. A circa 50-minute mockdocumentary entitled Life beyond the Box: Norman Stanley Fletcher was shown

as part of the Wall to Wall series on 29 December 2003 on BBC Two. Produced and directed by Kim Flitcroft, it purported to show various of the Slade Prison inmates 25 years on and featured a cameo by Ronnie Barker. Clement and La Frenais created an American version of Porridge – called On the Rocks – for the ABC Television network. It ran for a single 21-episode season between 11 September 1975 and 17 May 1976. The pilot had the working title Greybar Hotel.

Index A Across the Universe (2007) 142 Aitken, Jonathan, Porridge and Passion 152, 153 Aitken, Tony 58, 58 All in the Family (US TV) 101–2, 108, 162 n1 ’Allo ’Allo 160 n15 Angiolini, Dan, Prison On An L Plate 152 Archer, Jeffrey 53 archetypes, comedic 39–40, 149–50 Are You Being Served? 10, 83–4 film adaptation (1977) 113 Auf Wiedersehen Pet 144 B Banyard (character) 47–9, 48 in 1979 film 117–18, 163 n7 Barker, Ronnie 8, 12, 13, 110, 145, 156 n8 background/screen career 13–14, 124–5 book dedicated to 150 comments on Going Straight 140 death 153–4 Home Office video 152–3 input into series content 19, 130

opening voiceover 16 relationship with character 14, 124 see also Fletcher, Norman Stanley Barrington, Michael 37, 114 see also Venables, Governor Barrowclough, Henry (character) 5, 38, 70, 97, 98, 117 background/ characterization 5–6 married life 68–70, 79, 117 relationship with Mackay 5–6, 37–8 US counterpart 103–4 Bayldon, Geoffrey 114, 120, 163 n4 Beckinsale, Richard 103, 110, 140 background/screen career 15, 66, 90 casting 14–15 death 121 see also Godber, Lennie Behan, Brendan 157 n25 Biggins, Christopher 81, 86, 87 see also Lukewarm Bishop, Kevin 143 Bloomers 121, 136, 163 n12 The Blue Lamp (1950) 12 Blue Peter 20

Booth, Anthony 162 n1 Bottomley, Melvyn ‘Dylan’ (character) 56–7, 80 Bowie, David 81 Brake, Patricia 75, 76, 133, 140, 141 Brand, Jo 145 British Airways 143 Burgess, Anthony 18 burglary 158 n5 Butt, Ray 19–20 C ‘camp’ comedy 83–4 capital punishment 31, 108 Carry On Nurse (1959) 39 Carry On Sergeant (1958) 39 Chandler, Raymond 157 n25 Chaplin, Charlie 101 Chapman, Mrs (character) 134, 134, 140 Chappell, Eric 90 Chibnall, Steve 42 Citizen Smith 55–6, 59, 145 Clarke, Roy 10, 79, 124 class in later sitcoms 146 in Porridge 1, 6–7, 36–41, 45, 47–9, 51–7, 146 in Porridge (1979 film) 117–18 prison hierarchy 46–7 race, as US equivalent 102–3, 107–8

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180

of target audience 26, 31–2 in UK society 29, 30, 106–7 in US society 107 Cleese, John 13–14, 16 Clement, Dick 1, 7, 8, 23, 24, 61, 77, 96, 101 award of OBE 143 biographical/creative background 9–11, 156 n2 career after Porridge 142, 143, 144 comments on appeal/defining characteristics of Porridge 32, 40, 64 comments on casting 13 comments on Going Straight 142 comments on Porridge characters 6, 11–12, 47, 48, 81, 130 comments on recording process 15 comments on writing of On the Rocks 102–3, 106–7, 111 as director 111 research into prison system 16–19 A Clockwork Orange (1971) 18 The Commitments (1991) 142 Cook, Peter 10, 16 Cooper, Rowena 140, 164 n20 see also Chapman, Mrs Corbett, Ronnie 13–14, 124 corruption (in public life),

21st-century spread 146–7 crime drama 12–13 crime rates 1, 30–2, 125, 158 n5 (alleged) cause of increase 158 n9 Croft, David 10, 68–9 Crossroads 14–15 Curtis, Richard 79 D Dad’s Army 39, 40, 58, 62, 68–9, 92, 131 legacy 155 US adaptation 107–8 Davies, Gareth (prison governor) 153 Davies, Windsor 39 A Day Out (episode) 56–7, 64, 80, 119 Denham, Maurice 51 The Desperate Hours (episode) 66–7 Dickens, Charles 150, 164 n8 Disturbing the Peace (episode) 36, 96–9, 98, 99 Dixon of Dock Green 12, 19–20 Dodson, Eric 48 Doyle, Roddy 142 drugs 21, 66–7 The Dukes of Hazzard 105 Dury, Ian 118 E Ebert, Roger 161 n19 Eisner, Michael 101 Elizabeth R 161 n32

Ellis, June 73, 73 Enfield, Harry 146 extras, casting of 22–3 F Feldman, Marty 10 Fiddick, Peter 24 Final Stretch (episode) 123, 123–4 Fletcher, Ingrid (character) 73, 74–6, 75, 131, 131–2, 133, 139 Fletcher, Isobel (character) 73, 73, 130–1 Fletcher, Norman Stanley (character) 4, 5, 21, 33, 43, 47, 50, 65, 68, 70, 72, 73, 89, 91, 94, 96, 123, 147 in 1979 film 114–15, 115, 119, 120, 121 archetypal qualities 32, 39–40 background/ characterization 2–3, 11–12, 40–2 family life 72–6 in Going Straight 125–41, 126, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 ‘photofits’/mug-shots 2, 8, 127 political outlook 29–30, 57, 59 relationship with Godber 3, 4–5, 41–2, 63–6, 132–3, 136–8 relationship with Mackay see under Mackay relationship with McLaren 88, 90–2, 93

Index

religious views 57, 92–3 social/moral attitudes 75–7, 81, 90–2 tolerance of difference 81–3 US counterpart 103, 105–6 Fletcher, Raymond (character) 135, 136 food, theme of 35–6 see also kitchen Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish 35, 58–9 Freeland, Mark 164 n8 Friends 149 Frost, David 13 The Frost Report 13–14 Fuentes, Hector (character) 103, 103, 104, 105–6, 106, 110 G Galton, Ray 10, 104 gay men/issues 7, 77, 81–7, 105, 115–16 countering of stereotypes 81, 84–5 public attitudes to 86 social background 81 stereotypical treatments 83–4, 86–7 George, Susan 161 n19 Getting On 145 Gilbert, Jimmy 12, 13, 14, 15, 157 n24 Gleeson, Tim 20 Glover, Brian 33, 41 Godber, Lennie (character) 4, 33, 41–5, 43, 63–6, 65, 76, 83, 147

in 1979 film 115, 120, 121 background 3–5, 63 casting 14–15 in Going Straight 132–3, 135, 138, 139, 140 relationship with Fletcher see Fletcher, Norman Stanley sex life/relationships 63, 67, 75 US counterpart 103 Godber, Mrs (character) 74, 74 The Godfather (1972) 72 Godwin, Christopher 114, 116, 117 Going Home (episode) 126, 127–30, 128, 129 Going Off the Rails (episode) 136–8, 139, 142 Going Straight 27, 77, 111, 121, 125–42 compared with Porridge 138–41 critical/popular response 125, 141 genesis 125 social context 126–7 The Good Life 62 Grade, Lew 87, 113 Grade, Michael 87 Greene, Graham 12 Greene, Hugh (Carleton) 12, 156 n10 Grout, Harry (character) 46–7, 47, 140 in 1979 film 114, 118, 119

H Hancock’s Half Hour 6 Hannibal Brooks (1969) 10, 156 n2 Happy Days 149 The Harder They Fall (episode) 46 Harris, Max 20, 157 n30 Hartnell, William 39 Hasek, Jaroslav, The Good Soldier Svejk 11–12 Hawthorne, Nigel 137, 140 Healy, Tim 144 Heartbreak Hotel (episode) 74–6, 75, 76 Heath, Edward 29 Heller, Joseph, Catch 22 11 Henry, Paul 14–15 Heslop, Cyril (character) 41 Hoskins, Bob 125 Howard League for Penal Reform 18 Hunt, Peter 24–5 Hurst, Rick 105, 106 The Hustler (episode) 46–7, 82–3 I Idle, Eric 14, 145, 150 I’ll Fly You for A Quid (pilot episode) 12, 156 n8 (il)literacy 40–1, 67 It Ain’t Half Hot Mum 39 The Italian Job (1967) 46 Ives, Bernard (character) 49, 50, 83, 114, 118 J Jacques, Hattie 39 James, Erwin 25, 32, 45, 71, 153–4

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Jason, David 14, 96, 124, 145 see also Webb, ‘Blanco’ Jeffrey, Peter 97, 98, 99, 161 n32 see also Wainwright, ‘Napper’ Johns, Milton 126 Jones, Ken 49 Jones, Terry 14 Just Desserts (episode) 36, 48–9, 50 K Keeler, Christine 51–2 Kelly, Sam 67, 160 n15 see also Warren, ‘Bunny’ Khorsandi, Shapi 146 kitchen, (attitudes to) work in 66, 84 Kubrick, Stanley 18 182

L La Frenais, Ian 1, 7, 8, 22, 24, 61, 77, 96, 101, 106, 121 award of OBE 143 biographical/creative background 9–11, 156 n2 career after Porridge 142, 143, 144 comments on appeal of Porridge 32 comments on casting 13, 15 comments on creation of Porridge 18–19 comments on Porridge characters 4, 85–6, 133 comments on writing of On the Rocks 102, 111

research into prison system 16–19 as songwriter 118–19 Lane, Carla 61 Last Of The Summer Wine 10, 15, 79 Le Mesurier, John 39 Leith, Sam 146 The Likely Lads 10, 61, 66 film adaptation (1976) 113 Lindsay, Robert 56 Little Britain 6, 146 Littler, Susan 74 The Liver Birds 10, 61–2, 160 n1 5 Livingstone, David 94 Locke, Philip 163 n7 Loe (Beckinsale), Judy 66 Lotterby, Sydney 14–15, 19, 20, 22, 61–2, 115, 160 n1 5 Love Thy Neighbour 87 The Lovers 15, 66 Lubin, Lem 118–19 Lukewarm (character) 7, 81–7, 82, 83, 96, 140 Lyndhurst, Nicholas 135, 140 see also Fletcher, Raymond M Mackay, Fulton 14, 124, 140 death 121 see also Mackay, Mr (character) Mackay, Mr (character) 4, 16, 21, 33, 38, 43, 55, 93–4, 94, 165 n14

in 1979 film 115–17, 116, 117, 120–1, 121 background/character traits 3, 38, 44, 47 comedic counterparts 39 in Going Straight 126–30, 128, 129 home life, comments on 38–9, 68 inmates’ respect for 98–9 relationship with Fletcher 38–9, 43–5, 123–4, 127–30, 145–6, 153–4 relationship with Godber 43–5 relationship with inmates en masse 96–9, 115–16 relationships with colleagues 5–6, 37–8, 116–17 US counterpart 104 The Magic Roundabout 56 The Magnificent Evans 156 n8 Malcolm, Derek 122 Malone, Mary 57 Man About the House 62 Mandingo (1975 film) 161 n19 marriage commentary in Porridge 38–9, 67–70, 72–4 social attitudes to 159–60 n1 treatment in other sitcoms 62 Marshall, Jonathan 23, 35, 37, 157 n24

Index

input into writing of Porridge 18–19, 33, 150 masculinity, representations of 66 Mason, James 161 n19 masturbation 21, 70–1 McEwan, Mr (character) 135–6, 137 McLaren, Jim (character) 7, 50, 87–92, 89, 93, 123, 140 US counterpart 104–5 Medhurst, Andy 84 Men Without Women (episode) 67–70, 70, 73, 73–4, 74, 81–2, 82 merchandising 143 Mind Your Language 87, 157 n30 Minder 40 minority characters, portrayal of 7, 81 see also gay men/issues; race Monty Python’s Flying Circus 6, 10, 14, 101, 145 Moore, Dudley 10 Morecambe and Wise 66 Mortimer, John 164 n2 Morton, Garry 154 N National Association for Justice (US) 110 National Service 11 New, Barbara 72 New Faces, Old Hands (episode) 33, 33–4 A Night In (episode) 22, 64–6, 65, 71

Nixon, Richard M. 108 No Peace for the Wicked (episode) 58, 58, 71, 72 No Way Out (episode) 99, 159 n46 Noakes, John 20 noise(s), offscreen 22 Norma (character) 74, 74 Norman, Frank 18, 125, 157 n25 Not Only … But Also 10 O Oakes (character, 1979 film) 118, 119 The Office 150 older characters, treatment of 95–6 On the Buses 39, 165 n14 On the Rocks (US TV) 99, 101–11, 150 casting 110 characterization 103–6 limitations of acting 103, 110, 111 problems of adaptation 102–3, 106–10 public complaints about 110 writers’ disenchantment with 110–11 writing process 102 Only Fools and Horses 40, 135, 144 debt to Porridge 145 Onstottt, Kyle, Mandingo 89, 161 n19 Open All Hours 124 Osoba, Tony 87–8, 163 n5 comments on Porridge/ Going Straight 88, 98, 141, 144–5

see also McLaren, Jim Owens, Frankie, The Little Book of Prison 150 P Palin, Michael 14, 145, 164 n5 Pardon Me (episode) 95–6, 96 Peacock, Daniel 114–15, 115 Peep Show 6, 66 Perez, Jose 103, 110, 111 see also Fuentes, Hector Perry, Jimmy 68–9 Poetic Justice (episode) 51–5, 106 critical/popular response 54–5 politics, as theme of sitcoms 55–7, 106 pornography, prisoners’ use of 71 Porridge (film, 1979) 19, 111, 113–22 changes to cast/ characterization 114–15 critical/popular response 122 location filming 113–14 theme music 118–19 Porridge (TV, 1974–77) casting 14–15, 22–3 characterization 2–6, 32–3, 36–7 (see also names of characters) closing credits/music 20 controversial issues, treatment/avoidance of 21–2, 47–8, 66–7, 96, 151–2

183

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184

countering of stereotypes 81, 84–5, 87–9 critical/popular response 6, 13, 23–6, 31–2, 54–5, 124, 143–4 departure from sitcom norms 7, 24 impact on prison life 150–4 innovatory elements 1, 7, 26 lasting appeal 143–4, 145–7, 155 legacy 143–55 literary influences 11–12 location filming 19–20 merchandising 143 opening sequence 1, 16, 19, 157 n18 place in history of sitcom 6, 26, 62, 144–5 popular-cultural referencing 150–1 projected fourth series 124 recording procedure 16 rehearsal atmosphere 15, 111 repeat showings 147 researching 16–19 social context 11, 29, 30–1, 66, 81, 144 social/political themes 6–7, 29–59, 144 (see also class; gay men/ issues; race) title 19 vocabulary 22, 84 Porridge (TV, 2017) 143, 164 n1 Poston, Tom 103–4, 104

Powell, Vince 87, 96 prison officers, viewing of series 24–5, 153–4 Prisoner and Escort (pilot episode) 12, 13, 16, 21, 23, 29, 128 prison(s) admission procedures 32–3 age of inmates 23, 95, 161 n30 as filming locations 19, 113–14 impact of Porridge on life in 150–4 living conditions 35–6 popularity of Porridge within 25–6 population 31; racial make-up 162 n6 preferable to life outside, as comic theme 29, 69–70, 105, 126–7 (proposed) privatization 153, 165 n22 reforms 35 routines 33–5 as school for criminals 42 suicide rates 152–3 in US 108–9, 162 n6 writers’ visits to 16–19 writings by former inmates 150–2, 157 n25 (see also James, Erwin; Marshall, Jonathan; Norman, Frank) probation service, privatization 165 n22 Profumo, John, MP 51–2

R race, treatments of 7, 81, 87–95 (anti-)stereotypical portrayals 87–9, 146 in On the Rocks 102–3, 104–5, 107 US attitudes to 102–3, 107–8 Race Relations Act 1968 81 Rawley, Stephen, Judge 51, 51–5, 53, 54, 55, 56 Rear Guard (US TV) 107–8 Reed, Oliver 10, 156 n2 Reiner, Rob 162 n1 religion, in society/sitcom 57–8, 92–3 Rev 58 Rich, John 101–2, 110, 162 n1 Rising Damp 66, 90, 161 n21 film adaptation (1980) 121 Robinson, Jonathan, In It 150–2, 165 n14 Rosenthal, Jack 15 Rough Justice (episode) 51–5, 106 Rudge (character, 1979 film) 114–15, 115 Rumpole of the Bailey 164 n20 rural settings, for comedy 79 Rutter, Barry 119 S Sandler, Bobby 103, 106 Sanford and Son (US TV) 104

Index

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) 9 Saunders, James 163 n12 Scottish nationality 93–5 and Mackay’s character 93–4 and McLaren’s character 88 Nationalist movement 93, 94–5, 145–6 seaside postcards 148 Sellers, Peter 101, 119 Seven to One 17, 20 sex role in prisoners’ lives/ imaginations 70–1, 74–5, 131–2 social attitudes to 76–7 sexuality 79 sex offenders 47 sexism, in UK society 61 Sexual Offences Act 1967 81 Simpson, Alan 10, 104 sitcom(s) 1970s, as ‘golden age’ 147–8 development of 6 geographical settings 79 ‘slopping out’ 35, 158 n18 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich 11 The Sopranos 72 Speight, Johnny 10, 102 Spender, Stephen 157 n25 Steptoe and Son 10, 65–6, 81, 104 Stewart, Mel 103, 104, 106 A Storm in a Teacup (episode) 67

suicides, in prison 152–3 Sullivan, John 55–6, 145, 164 n8 Swift, David 136, 140

similarities with Fletcher 59 The Vicar of Dibley 79 violence, threats of 21

T television, viewing habits/ statistics 149, 164–5 n11 A Test of Character (episode) 42 Thatcher, Margaret 145, 147, 158 n9 Thaw, John 125 Thick As Thieves 125 Till Death Us Do Part 10, 59, 81, 102, 108, 162 n1 Trevor (character) 81–2, 85, 85 The Two Ronnies 13–14, 124 Two Way Stretch (1960) 119

W Wainwright, ‘Napper’ (character) 98, 99 Walliams, David 6 Warner, Jack 12 Warren, ‘Bunny’ (character) 46, 67, 68, 89–90, 140 US counterpart 105 Waterhouse, Keith, Billy Liar 22 Ways and Means (episode) 88, 89 Webb, ‘Blanco’ (character) 95–6, 96 popular-cultural referencing 150–1 Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? 10, 62, 81, 125, 133, 138–9 Whittaker (character, 1979 film) 115–16 Wickham, Phil 10, 62 Widdicombe, Josh 150 Wilcox, Paula 15 Wilde, Brian 6, 15, 69 see also Barrowclough, Henry Williams, Hal 104–5, 106 Williams, Kenneth 13, 50, 84, 159 n46 Wilson, Harold 29 Withers, Googie 23 Within These Walls 23

U unemployment 31 United States penal system 108–9 TV comedy, crosspollination with UK 101, 149–50 upper working-class figures, in sitcom 38, 39 Usher, Shaun 24, 32, 57 V Vaughan, Peter 46, 47 see also Grout, Harry Venables, Governor (character) 37, 51, 52

185

Inde x

women (offscreen) presence 7, 61, 63, 67–70 in target audience 66 Wood, Victoria 79

186

World War Two 2, 40, 44 Y youth culture 95

Z Z Cars 12

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