A man who held his own solicitor hostage, kidnapped a taxi driver and tortured his cellmate was today beginning a life sentence.

Mervyn Plummer, 20, right, was described as a very serious threat to the public with no regard for anybody by police after he was led away to begin his sentence.

Yesterday, Plummer was jailed for life for attacking his cellmate Martin Young in October last year at Bullingdon Prison, near Bicester. He punched and kicked him in the head and stomach, smashed a sauce bottle over his head, bound and gagged him and repeatedly whipped him with an electrical flex.

After appearing at Bicester Magistrates' Court on November 27 last year in relation to the attack on Mr Young, he escaped from custody by holding a make-shift knife made out of a blade and piece of plastic, to prison officer Kate Musson. He stole a craft knife from a shed as he hid from the Thames Valley Police helicopter over head.

He called in at a taxi company and chatted casually with the proprietor before asking a driver, former soldier Nigel Tabner, to take him to Bicester Station where he pulled the knife on him.

He demanded Mr Tabner take him to a multiplex cinema on junction 10 of the M6, near Birmingham, so he could meet up with friends. Mr Tabner left him there and contacted police.

Plummer, of Hulme, Manchester, appeared at Oxford Magistrates' Court in March in relation to the Bicester escape, after being picked up by police in Manchester on driving offences.

His solicitor, Aaron Riley, handed him a pen to sign a legal aid form.