Norman Stanley Fletcher

Fletcher is a career criminal doing a stretch at Slade Prison, an old hand who has been inside enough times to know exactly how the system works and how to work it. He's cynical, quick-witted and unbothered by authority, taking the new fish Godber under his wing while running his own small angles wherever he can.

Barker gives Fletcher a weary, watchful intelligence that turns every exchange with the guards into a duel of wits he mostly wins on points rather than force. The writing trusts him to be funny without ever making prison look comfortable, and that balance of humour and quiet dignity is what makes him so endlessly rewatchable.