The chaplain of Mountjoy Jail in Dublin was used unwittingly yesterday in an attempt to smuggle a mobile phone into the jail — in a birthday cake. The Belfast Telegraph reports.

“… Since x-ray machines were introduced, the smuggling of drugs and mobile phones into Mountjoy through visitors has ceased and the price of purchasing a phone in the jail has jumped dramatically.

Officials said this incident showed prisoners were becoming desperate to find other ways to bring in the contraband.

“This is a classic case,” one official said last night. “It’s like a plot out of an old English film, made in Pinewood studios. But in this case, heavenly intervention was on our side.”

It is a criminal offence to smuggle a mobile phone into a jail, carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison. “