Porridge

- Season 1

(1974)

Like the old lag that he is, Fletch knows how to play the system and takes young, first-timer Godber under his wing when they have to share a cell with the dim-witted Cyril Heslop. Fletch pretends to have flat feet to get his own shoes back but the doctor isn't fooled. He does, however, tell Fletch that the governor keeps tropical fish so, on meeting the governor, Fletch claims to be an animal lover. And is duly rewarded with a job on the prison farm, mucking out the pigs.

Fletch is caught up in the inmates' mania for gambling and, working on the farm, has lots of eggs to use as stakes. After Fletch loses a bet with fellow con Ives, he is delighted when Mackay catches Ives with the eggs on him. However, Ives gets revenge by tipping Mackay off about an illegal Snakes and Ladders game run by Fletch in the coal-hole, to which he was not invited. Cue coal being emptied onto the players. However Fletch has the last laugh when he is moved to a single cell ...having bet everybody else that he would be.

Godber and Fletcher are sharing a cell. Godber is starting to get quite homesick so Fletcher helps him find ways to kill the time and be more positive.

Fletch and Godber are members of an outside works party digging a sewerage trench in the churchyard. When Ives is stung by a bee, Fletch persuades Barraclough to let him go to the village for ointment, where of course he has a swift pint in the local pub, as well as meeting the local vicar. The prisoners end up in the church, to shelter from a threatened thunderstorm, causing Mackay to believe they have all run off as they are nowhere to be seen when he returns from his lunchtime drink. He alerts the chief officer who duly turns up to find the prisoners all present ...

As a punishment Fletch is sewing fishing nets with McLaren, an aggressive, quick-tempered prisoner. Fletch has a plan to turn them both from zero to hero, after a roof-top protest by McLaren, from which he will be talked down by Fletch, after attempts by others fail. The plan works, but not quite in the way Fletch hopes.

After prisoner Warren gets a letter from his wife which causes him to doubt her fidelity, Fletch offers welfare services to him and some other prisoners, instructing them on how to write an appropriate letter to their partners. Fletch's daughter Ingrid visits with bad news about Fletch's wife, for which he gets a weekend's compassionate leave. There is no bad news - it is a ploy for Fletch to go home, spend time with his wife and watch football.