Judge gives serial burglar a taste of TV’s Porridge as he jails him
Court is an occupational hazard for you, he says – just like Fletcher was told
IT’S one of the opening lines from classic prison comedy Porridge – and now a judge has used it when he put a career criminal back behind bars.
Judge John Edwards told a burglar he treated arrest and imprisonment as an ‘occupational hazard’ – the same words used by a fictional counterpart when jailing TV’s Norman Stanley Fletcher, played by Ronnie Barker in the 1970s sitcom.
Like Fletcher, 48-year-old Alan Wild was a habitual burglar, with convictions dating back two decades, a court heard.
His barrister asked for him to be spared another prison stretch. But Judge Edwards told Wild: ‘You have been in and out of courts now for offences of dishonesty for 21 years and the sad fact is in my view the court is an occupational hazard for you.’ He jailed him for 27 months after he admitted burglary charges, saying ‘punishment and protection of the public is at the heart of this sentencing process’. The reference to court appearances being an ‘occupational hazard’ was in the opening sequence of each episode of Porridge.
In the sitcom, Fletcher is sent to the fictional Slade prison for breaking and entering and stealing a lorry.
In the introductory voice-over provided by Barker himself at the beginning of every episode, the fictional judge says: ‘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 a 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 to the maximum term allowed for these offences – you will go to prison for five years.’
Wild, of Oldham, committed the latest offences between June and September last year, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester was told.
Prosecutor Hayley Bennett said he snatched a TV set worth £600 from one business and computer and electrical equipment worth £2,200 from another. He had been jailed for 18 weeks just last year.
Defence counsel Megan Tollitt said Wild had developed ‘new insight’ into his behaviour after falling victim to burglars himself, saying: ‘He is motivated to change.’
Appointed a judge in 2018, Judge Edwards lists his recreations in Who’s Who as rugby union, tennis and history… but not 1970s sitcoms.
‘Motivated to change’