Warders take jaundiced view of prisoner's penmanship

A prisoner desperate to get out of jail spent two days covering his entire body in yellow highlighter pen to try to convince warders he had a bad attack of jaundice.

The inmate, serving six years at British maximum-security prison Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight, for attempted robbery, hoped warders would arrange for an ambulance to transfer him to hospital.

But his plan was thwarted when a guard looked through a cell-door inspection hatch during the night - and spotted him using the pen on his face.

A spokesman for Parkhurst said the middle-aged inmate had tried to fake jaundice to reach an outside hospital and escape.

'He had carefully painted all his body - even his private bits - with the yellow highlighter pen,' he said. 'The problem was he made such a good job of it he was a very bright yellow indeed.

'He would probably have died from jaundice if he had been suffering an attack so severe that it turned his skin that colour.