So they’ve voted to can the breakfast meal that has been a daily staple for British lags for two centuries. It’s a decision that would surely have got the thumbs-up from Ronnie Barker’s famous lag Fletch in 1970s TV hit Porridge – slang for doing time. (Image: Mirrorpix)The move at HMP Holme House, in Teesside, comes 200 years since it was first served up at Inveraray Jail, in Scotland, which opened in 1820. A book called Lag’s Lexicon, published in 1950, first recorded the phrase “doing porridge” as slang among prisoners for their sentence. The switch away from porridge at HMP Holme House emerged in a report by jail watchdog the Independent Monitoring Board.

Source: Daily Mirror July 04, 2020 16:19 UTC