5th September marked the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Porridge. The lead character Norman Stanley Fletcher an ‘habitual criminal’ was to be found at HMP Slade in Cumbria. Fletcher was played by Ronnie Barker and the scripts were written by Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais.
The series ran until 1977
Fletcher resided, when not in jail, in Muswell Hill North London. He would have to have been a rather more effective criminal than he appeared to be to afford a house there in 2024. However if we assume his residence in the 1970s dated from the 1950s or 1960s, house prices were rather less. The area was known for housing BBC employees (the Alexandra Palace link) and members of the Communist Party (not the same thing btw) as the Russian Embassy/Trade Mission was nearby in Highgate. I also lived there myself.
Fletcher was a Spurs fan which was either a factual error by Clement and Le Frenais or a joke. Muswell Hill is on the Arsenal side of Haringey.
Once released from Slade Fletcher ran a pub. He was in the right place for the first Wetherspoons which opened in Colney Hatch Lane N10 (as Marlers) in 1979. I never saw him behind the bar there though
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