A man, serving a five-year jail sentence for a serious stabbing after he was taunted about his appearance on the Jeremy Kyle TV show, fled prison to be near to his family, a court heard yesterday.

Christopher Eustace, 25, hitched a lift to Keighley, after escaping from Sudbury open prison in Derbyshire, and handed himself in at a police station the same day.

His barrister, Stephen Wood, told Bradford Crown Court his client had been transferred from a Doncaster prison to Sudbury, where it was impossible for his family to visit him.

Mr Wood said Eustace lodged appropriate requests with the prison governor for a transfer, but was turned down, and was even prepared to be moved to a higher category prison nearer his home.

Mr Wood said: “Frustrated with his predicament, he took matters into his own hands, hitched a lift back to Keighley and went immediately to the police station and handed himself in.

“He was at large for a short period of time, solely with the intention of being arrested and remanded in West Yorkshire.”

Eustace, of Coronation Way, Braithwaite, Keighley, who appeared via a video link from Leeds Prison, pleaded guilty to escape.

Mr Wood said Eustace had been due for release from prison in November. He had been working five days a week, enjoying town visits and had just completed three days of home leave.

Prosecutor Michael Smith said the defendant was found to be missing from Sudbury during a routine check. He said Eustace had been jailed for five years in October, 2011, for wounding with intent.

He knifed Damian Thompson in the abdomen, puncturing his liver, after the complainant shouted at him: “You’re the woman beater off Jeremy Kyle.”

Eustace had wrongly been labelled a wife-beater on the programme.

Mr Thompson needed surgery to remove a kidney and his gall bladder.

Judge Robert Bartfield, sentencing him to a consecutive six months imprisonment, told Eustace: “I have to make it clear that people can’t simply choose which institution they are going to be in. If they leave that institution and become at large, they will be given a prison sentence to make it plain it is not acceptable.”