"What, with these feet?!"

Norman Stanley Fletcher, that perpetual con, trying to blag the prison Doctor into giving him decent shoes in the first episode of Porridge, while simultaneously disavowing homosexuality.

Many a truth is woven within the fabric of comedy, and Fletcher's exchange with the Medical Officer is a classic. Not only as a comedy sketch, but as a reflection of the essentials that form part of our dealings with the MO.

The Medical Officer - nowadays a contracted GP - is one of the few gateways that prisoners can try to exploit in order to gain some small advantage or benefit above the herd.

A new mattress? Wide-fitting shoes? A proper chair? An unusual diet? An excuse from work? All lay within the domain of the MO. And the wordly-wise con will try to blag his way from the first moment. Hence Fletcher's complaints about flat feet as soon as he lands at HMP Slade. His previous experience shows!

Of course, there are those whose complaints and maladies are quite genuine. But any medical condition which leads to some perceived benefit, such as comfier shoes, will doubtless be faked by some chancer.

This places the MO in a difficult position. Is he dealing with a genuine complaint or a faker? The historical method of weeding out the later is to treat every con as if he was lying through his teeth, and see who gives up and who ends up at deaths door.

With the dismemberment of the Prison Medical Service in favour of NHS treatment, we had hoped that this malign and mistrustful view of prisoner-patients would wither. To some extent it has, but not completely.

When you go to see your GP, does she assume you are lying? If you require pain relief, is it prescribed? Because these are pretty fundamental to any medical service worth its name. But despite our healthcare now being provided by the NHS, nurses who are based within prisons find it difficult to avoid being contaminated with the attitudes of the screws - that is, anti-con.

This sometimes shows up in small ways. I recently overheard a nurse phoning a hospital outside regarding two appointments. Both times, she referred to the men as 'prisoners'. Not patients, prisoners. As that's an irrelevant consideration for arranging appointments, that merely reflected how that nurse perceives us -prisoners first, patients second. And prisoners come with baggage - such as an assumption that we are invariably lying.

At the grand age of 45, I have had prescription strength painkillers (i.e., anything above Ibuprofen) issued to me by the MO a total of four times in my adult life. Four. Either I am a medical marvel, obscenely healthy, or prison medics really don't like issuing painkillers. I lean - heavily - towards the latter.

This is one of the difficulties facing the MO. Even if they completely avoid being contaminated by the prisons attitudes of prisoners, they then have two other hurdles to negotiate. Firstly, the attitudes of nurses, the permanent staff in the healthcare wing. It is a regular event that some prescription or other is questioned by nurses, mostly prescriptions for the more effective drugs. "Oh, I don't think the Doctor should have prescribed these...". Cynical as I may be about the Medical Officer, they do have the benefit of 8 years medical school and the letters MD; it's not for nurses to question.

The second hurdle for the GP to navigate around is the Formulary. In brief, there is an official presumption against giving strong medications - especially painkillers - to prisoners. Ibuprofen is King in prison healthcare, and it's a cynical truism that Paracetamol can be used to cure anything up to and including cancer.

Fletcher didn't manage to get his shoes from the MO. And he'd have had as much chance as the rest of us as getting decent painkillers.

Screwing the Screws

There is a tradition amongst prisoners that we will cheerfully nick anything that belongs to the system. As we say, "it's a big firm, it can afford it". For most of us there isn't even a twinge of morality involved in this.

This was beautifully portrayed by Fletcher in an episode of Porridge, where he nicked the bell off a screw’s bike. He had no need for it, no use could be made of it, but the screw left it vulnerable. He also had a roaring trade in eggs stolen from the chickens he looked after on the farm detail.

Should we be pressed then we can produce justifications. We are held against our will and so the system is our enemy. Thieving from them is seen as a militant act.
The system also ensures that we have to struggle to obtain even the simplest of things and happily overcharges us for the privilege. In such circumstances, robbing some of the kitchen's sugar (for example) is just good sense.

My greatest coup in this respect was when, unaccountably, one prison offered me the job of "Wing No.l". This is a deeply ambivalent position, involving being a screw’s tea-boy. So I spoke to the post-holder and inquired about the potential for perks. That is, what could be robbed?

This particular No.1 job had great scope. I was in charge of the wing tea-room, an old cell equipped with a cooker, microwave, kettle and stocked with pies, pasties and vast quantities of chocolate bars. Staff paid in cash.

This could be the mother lode of blags. As long as the money tallied with the stock, all was happy. My fiendish brain worked out a plan. Each morning I had to feed the screws with tea and toast for breakfast and I thought I could add some value. A mate began nicking blocks of cheese from the kitchen, which I offered as cheese on toast to the screws at an outrageous price.

This money then allowed me to dip into the stock and yet the money reconciled. It became a regular practice, my stolen cheese being sold to the screws for cash which then allowed me to sell boxes of Mars bars for dope. When the wing Senior Officer found out where the cheese was coming from he went a bit barmy. Flogging stolen goods to his staff seemed just a tad cheeky. The staff thought otherwise, their view of the morality of nicking from the Firm being as flexible as mine. A blind eye was turned and business carried on.

Perhaps the dope this scheme was funding went to my head but I got bored. The job entailed close and sustained contact with staff, which in that prison wasn't necessarily an easy situation. And so when I was approached by a con waving a £20 note requesting I prepare him some food to take on a transfer, I stuffed every pie and pasty I had into the oven!

No sooner did I deliver them than the Senior Officer (SO) began hounding me. "Who were they for?" I tried to persuade him that they were for a screw from another wing, "don't know his name guv". Being a very persistent man, the SO phoned every screw in the nick, he even put a notice on the front Gate, "Anybody bought pasties from the A Wing tea room?"

Of course, this phantom member of staff couldn't be found and that evening the SO approached me sorrowfully. "Time for you to hand in your notice, don't you think...?" What the hell, I'd had a good run and nothing was proven. One - Nil to the prisoners.

I Want a Life of Luxury!

How can a man be in prison but not be being punished? Welcome to the wacky world of the life sentence. My punishment ended 20 years ago. The past couple of decades of imprisonment were not meant to be punitive in any way. Life sentence are split into two parts. The first part is the 'tariff’ - the time to be served as punishment and retribution. In my case, ten years. According to the law, my debt is paid. Since then, 'post-tariff’, detention has been based on what it is believed I might possibly do in the future. It is preventative detention, not punitive. Please understand that I'm not offering an opinion, or throwing this open to debate -I'm stating the factual legal structure of life sentences, like it or not. So why shouldn't I have a TV, PlayStation, and hot-n-cold running women if I so desire? Why can I not have every amenity and luxury that I could afford, as long as it didn't undermine security? Sometimes it may be necessary to detain people after their tariff because they obviously pose a grave public danger. With proper legal safeguards, that may squeeze through the acceptability barrier. Just. But whilst we are being detained on such a basis, shouldn't the detainee be allowed all the amenities of a free man, save those that undermine security?

Bring back Porridge!

Somewhere in the dying years of the 20th Century, the prison service was assaulted by modernity. One side effect was that they stopped giving us porridge for breakfast. Cereal became the order of the day.

We didn't complain too much, prison porridge was not to be anticipated as a good start to any day. The only real impact was that this deprived us of our glue. Porridge was a very good substance to stick pin-ups to the wall. Now we have to use toothpaste. That aside, porridge can rot in history.

The Porridge that we should bring back is the TV series. It must be the best part of 30 years since it was made but both cons and screws will tell you that it was the most realistic portrayal of prison ever made.

The walls may have been painted, cell furniture updated, and striped shirts hard to get hold of, but for all the altered ephemera, that programme still captures the social milieu. And wouldn't most cons like to think that they have a touch of the Fletcher about them, able to out-wit the system at the smallest opportunity?

I've just realised that younger readers, or non-UK readers, won't have a bloody clue what I'm talking about. Sorry! If only "Fawlty Towers" had been a prison...