With his 23 videos, the French-speaking user who goes by the well-chosen pseudonym, “ScoField” aka @skofield91, an undisguised reference to Michael Scofield’s character in “Prison Break”, is a sensation on TikTok.

One of his videos has even reached more than 806,000 views, and none have less than 35,000.

So what’s behind his popularity? Easy and budget-friendly recipes. His most-watched video is the recipe for tiramisu revisited with the most accessible ingredients – small dry cookies for the bottom, a little Nutella, and a preparation based on fresh cream.

While purists may take offence, the video has collected many comments praising the resourcefulness of the user, who puts together an electric mixer with a fan and a whisk.

And there’s a reason behind this inventiveness – it’s because it is done within his tiny cell. ScoField is demonstrating what’s possible to “cook” in prison, if a person has access to a few ingredients.

While using a cell phone is normally forbidden in prison, this TikToker obviously doesn’t fear any repercussions and freely films himself, face uncovered, as well as the inside of his cell, although he never refers to the reasons for his imprisonment or his location.

It is, unfortunately, possible that the prisoner has lost certain privileges since as of Aug 24 , the videos of “skofield91” are no longer visible. The page still displays the 20,800 subscribers and the 372,400 “likes” accumulated.

A worldwide phenomenon

This offbeat story is not a one-off – Jeron Combs, a 31-year-old man sentenced to 70 years in prison for murder, is also a star on TikTok.

Unlike the French prisoner, the American’s TikTok account, @blockbyjmoney, is still active and has 332,500 followers and more than 3.2 million cumulative “likes” – fame on which Combs intends to capitalise by making his pseudonyms available on Cashapp and Venmo, two applications widely used in the United States to send money.

Over on Twitter, many users are talking about these videos posted by prisoners, which is not surprising since the hashtags #prisontiktok and #prisontok have 1.5 billion and 801.2 million views respectively on the Chinese social network.