A prisoner serving a 10-year sentence for stabbing a man has posted photos on Facebook of him posing with fellow inmates.

Mobile phones and social networking sites are banned from prisons, but this didn’t stop Royston Coates posting updates from his cell.

Images posted on March 9 show his cell walls covered in photographs and filled with luxuries such as a TV and DVDs.

Over the past six months Coates posted messages to his 303 Facebook friends about watching X Factor, Towie and an England international football match on TV.

The brazen crook even shared his mobile number and encouraged people to contact him.

In one of the first posts from last October Coates joked: “Go out or stay in? Hmmmmmm.”

He also expresses his frustration about being locked up: “Glad I am locked away so I don’t have to bump in to all them nasty lil 2 face sweat in macc!”

A spokesman for the prison service said they were investigating the matter and the social media network firm had been told to close the page.

The account was closed shut shortly after prison service were contacted by the Express.

Coates, formerly of Devon Close in Macclesfield, was jailed for ten years in October after admitting wounding, in relation to his role in an incident where a man was stabbed with a kitchen knife in the chest.

He and a co-defendant had gone to sell drugs at Pennine Court flats in Macclesfield in May 2013 when they attacked their victim, who had been sitting in a car with friends outside.

Coates later boasted about the incident in text messages.

The victim was hospitalised with a collapsed lung.

A spokesman for the Prison Service would not say which prison Coates was being kept in.

But he added: “Anyone caught accessing social networking sites or instructing others to do so on their behalf will be subject to strict disciplinary action.

“No prisoner should be in any doubt that if they break the rules they will be stripped of privileges and may be reported to the police for further action, which may result in extra time being added to their sentence.”