Robber Andy Ivison fled Spring Hill open prison because he was worried he would get hooked on the drugs easily available there.

Former addict Ivison - who once beat a shop assistant with an iron bar - added he would have given himself up to police after he had seen England's World Cup clash with Sweden on TV.

At Oxford Crown Court, Ivison, 32, admitted escaping from Spring Hill in Buckinghamshire on June 17 - just two weeks after he was transferred there from Bullingdon prison near Bicester.

The court was told Ivison, serving a six-year sentence for robbery, had been reported missing following a morning roll-call.

He was on the run for four days before being arrested in the Black Boy pub in Headington - hours after the Oxford Mail had published his picture on its front page and on billboards outside newsagents.

Police were tipped off when a Mail reader saw Ivison originally from Barton - at a bus stop.

Cathy Olliver, prosecuting, said Ivison had been aware the police were looking for him and planned to give himself up after watching England play Sweden on Tuesday, June 20.

Peter Du Feu, defending, said Ivison was a recovering heroin addict and was unhappy at being in Spring Hill due to the easy accessibility of drugs.

He wanted to return to Bullingdon.

But on being told a transfer could take six months to process, he had packed his bags and walked the 20 miles to Headington, Mr Du Feu said.

He added: "He went to Spring Hill and he says the environment was quite different in that drugs were carried in much more easily.

"He was worried he would be drawn towards that."

While out of jail, Ivison met his teenage son Kyle and had been to his doctor for a prescription for diazepam.

When police found him in the Black Boy, Mr Du Feu said, Ivison "smiled, put his hands together and invited being cuffed".

"He had no intention to stay at large very long," he added.

Appealing for a minimal sentence, Mr Du Feu said Ivison had been a 'model prisoner' and started an Open University course in counselling.

Ivison, who was sent back to Bullingdon, was sentenced to an extra 42 days there.

Judge Julian Hall told him: "Prison escapes can fall into a number of categories dramatic and dangerous and very undramatic and not dangerous.

"Yours is very much at the bottom of the scale."

Ivison was jailed in May last year after admitting robbing a Co-op store in Banbury Road, Kidlington and attempting to rob Costcutter in Marston, Oxford.