Porridge – The surprising facts behind this book based on the classic comedy

A quick look at a book based on the prison-based comedy series, Porridge.

This paperback book of the BBC’s Porridge was adapted by Jonathan Marshall from Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’s television scripts. Inside, each of the seven chapters are re-tellings of the television episodes, starting with the ‘unofficial’ pilot episode, Prisoner and Escort and covering the remaining episodes from the first series, ending with Men Without Women.

The author of this book was Jonathan Marshall, a former prisoner who had written a book called How to Survive in the Nick (Allison and Busby, 1973). When Clement and La Frenais were struggling to formulate ideas for their prison-based sitcom, they spoke with Marshall who told them about prison slang, dress, and routines. A phrase used by Marshall – “little victories” – struck a chord with the scriptwriters and influenced their decision to base the series on an inmate who made life in prison more bearable by beating the system, even in trivial ways.

The title and copyright pages identify this as the BBC edition released in 1975 (ISBN 0-563-12898-4) and re-printed by the BBC in ‘76 . The TV series received further novelisations by other writers: Another Stretch of Porridge (1976) and A Further Stir of Porridge (1977), both by Paul Victor and Going Straight (1978). The three Porridge novelisations were later collected as Three Helpings of Porridge in1984, and republished as The Complete Porridge in 1990. The Porridge film was novelised as Porridge: The Inside Story by Paul Ableman (Pan Books, 1979).

This, along with other Porridge novelisations, are written in the ‘first person’ in Fletcher’s voice, turning the TV episodes into his personally narrated account. Fletcher in print is the same cheerful cynic with biting wit, old lag bluff, and a practical eye for the small advantages. The same schemes and stubborn zest for life. As in the TV series, he refuses to let prison have the last (printed) word.

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