ORIGINAL LP SLEEVE NOTE: PORRIDGE - AN EVENING IN AND HEARTBREAK HOTEL I wonder how many of us in the past few years have added a new meaning to the word Porridge. Three years ago when the word was mentioned I only thought of breakfast cereals, but now not only does it bring many happy memories but also a lot of laughs. Norman Stanley Fletcher was born in 1973 in a series of television programmes called Seven of One which were designed to feature Ronnie Barker in as many varied characters and different comedies as possible. Prisoner and Escort, as Porridge was originally called, was one of these. As I remember, it was quite well received, a good solid comedy situation in which both cast and script were excellent. However, my mind was set on what I thought to be the hit of the series, also written by Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais, a comedy set in Wales with an intriguing plot and a marvellous tag. But Prisoner and Escort was about prisons and warders - to me it was a one off. I mean how could anyone develop a comedy series set in, of all places, one of Her Majesty's Prisons, or about a hard-boiled recidivist such as Norman Stanley Fletcher? In retrospect, and in my defence, someone ese I believe had similarly wrong ideas about the Beatles just before they became famous. What I hadn't taken into account in Porridge was the genius of Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais. The programme wasn't all about prisons and authority, but about people trapped in a situation, and one particular person's need to achieve little victories to help him stay alive and keep sane whilst doing the 'bird'. It was at once sometimes serious, sometimes dramatic but funny, and that's where another genius came in - Ronnie Barker. An Evening In was one of the first scripts sent as a follow-up to Prisoner and Escort. The moment I read it I was convinced that Porridge was a winner. How believable Lennie's plea for help when he says he can't stand being locked in and not having a handle on the door. And Fletcher's resolve to put his son through an expensive grammar school, kitted out with all the finest equipment a boy could possibly want because his father had just done a school outfitters in Muswell Hill... And the reality of Fletcher's relationship with the law: Prison is an occupational hazard, when your occupation is breaking the law. This script said most of what Porridge is about. Not since The Likely Lads, also written by Dick and Ian, or Johnny Speight's Alf Garnett, had characters become so real, so alive and funny. Many flattering things have been said about Porridge but two will remain memories. After two series of programmes I visited one of Her Majesty's Prisons, and whilst I was there I was entertained by the Governor. He explained that the first series had not been seen by his inmates as the BBC had put it on after 9.00pm, which was the prison lock-up time - but the second series had been an instant success; so much so that everything else was forgotten for the half-hour of the programme, including the queue which normally forms for hot water for the nightly drink before lock-up. Whe the programme finished at a few minutes to nine, the queue that rapidly formed was so long that lock-up - normally sacrosanct - had to be delayed for twenty minutes. Since then a notice appears regularly - Remember tonight's 'Porridge' night, no hot water after 8.30pm. The second personal filip for all of us was from the Home Office. An official there who, when asked the stock question What's prison really like? now has a stock answer, Don't you watch 'Porridge'? Sydney Lotterby.
