Norman Stanley Fletcher

For a man of his age and poor education, Fletch speaks with confidence and a large vocabulary on a wide range of topics including politics, race relations, the justice system and society in general, and appears to possess a considerable degree of natural intellect. Although he is a tolerant man (he is friends with McClaren, a black man, and Lukewarm, a homosexual), he is often cynical about the world, and is generally pessimistic. For the most part his attitude never goes beyond simple complaining and playful teasing of Mr. Mackay, although Fletch occasionally shows a darker side which reflects his true mental state, usually when he is talking about his past. The large amount of time he has spent in prison has left him feeling that he has wasted his life. In the final episode of Going Straight, he is convinced not to go back to crime after walking into a pet shop and seeing the animals in cages, reminding him of his time in prison. He struggles to adapt to life on the outside after his spell in Slade prison, and his frayed nerves have resulted in a quick temper, shown by how quick he is to shout at his daughter Ingrid. He is also something of a drinker - on one occasion, after sneaking away from an outdoor trip, he goes straight to a pub and drinks several pints of beer, one of which he downs in one. In Going Straight, he consumes several pints of beer and a few whisky chasers just on the train from Carlisle to London. He mentions that an average day in Muswell Hill involved visiting four different pubs for a 'swift half'. He is upset that his wife Isobel has left him, and struggles to cope with the responsibility of holding his family together.

Fletch is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter; in one episode Fletch tells an inmate that while on compassionate leave he had "a sing song at the pub, a Sunday roast and watched Spurs win at home". In the first episode of Going Straight he collects his personal possessions upon his release from the prison -- one of which includes a Tottenham Hotspur key chain. However, in the movie version, this affiliation is contradicted when Fletcher states that he is a lifetime Leyton Orient supporter. This contradiction may have been needed for a laugh line in the movie script since Fletcher was trying in the story line to avoid coaching the prison football team, and was suggesting he'd faced a lifetime of fan disappointment: that could not really be said of a Tottenham supporter in 1979 (when the movie was released),[3] but could credibly be said about Leyton, which had spent the preceding several decades languishing in the 2nd- and 3rd-tiers of English football.[4]