It is nearly 50 years since David Jason appeared alongside Ronnie Barker in Porridge, playing ‘Blanco’ Webb, an elderly prisoner doing life for murder.
Jason was only in his thirties at the time and had to be heavily made up to come across as such an aged inmate.
In those days, the character would have been an anomaly in British jails, but a recent survey by two charities found that there are more than 300 prisoners aged over 80 now behind bars. Crime used to be
