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Ronnie Biggs: wheelchair-bound |
Sheer vindictiveness keeps this sick old rascal Ronnie Biggs inside
Ronnie Biggs: The Inside Story. By Mike Gray, Tel Currie and Michael Biggs
Apex Publishing
RONNIE was just a rascal, one of the chaps who got in a little too deep and was cheeky enough to slip away from prison on a rope ladder when he saw the opportunity come his way.
He’s got a heart of gold, never touched shooters, no doubt loved his mother, hated violence and shouldn’t be whiling away his final, decrepit days in jail.
And anybody who disagrees, to use the tough-guy speak which frames much of this latest angry appeal for freedom, is a sack of shit.
So goes the well-rehearsed argument which has been put to every Home Secretary since Ronnie Biggs returned back from his fugitive’s exile in Brazil seven years ago.
The campaign to release the Great Train Robber – or maybe that should be a robber in the Great Train Robbery, as he is said to have been less than great at his only role and watched most of the drama in 1963 unfold from a grass verge – might finally be rewarded this year.
But his friends are tired of waiting. For the past three years Biggs has been said to have been close to death, unable to speak and eating through a tube. Ronnie Biggs: The Inside Story is a punt at pointing out the vindictiveness of keeping the cuffs on this geriatric prisoner, unlikely to be capable of causing much mischief if he is ever allowed out and about in his wheelchair. .
Had he known that coming back to England from his fugitive exile in Brazil would lead to such an extended stay in the confined retirement homes of Belmarsh and Norwich prisons, maybe his celebrated patriotic wish to die in his own country might not have burned so intensely.
Wriggling away from the authorities and the scene of a £2.6million heist – lionised by film and folklore – so that he could enjoy the odd samba dance and a beer at the Rio carnival, has obviously opened a deep wound at the Home Office. It’s a cut which has been salted by the embarrassment of botched searches and investigations.
But it’s almost as if for every picture of Biggs winking or raising a glass in the sunshine he needs to be punished with an extra couple of months in chokey. There might not be enough months left for that.
Mike Gray writes most of the chapters here, eager to point out the crunching level of security Biggs is kept under. Gray’s a kind of Biggsy superfan who became absorbed by the runaway’s Hollywood script of a life, starting by collecting news clippings and graduating into one of the main drivers to free him, managing the media and appearing at court dates alongside Michael Biggs, his friend’s Brazilian born son. He tells how he is honoured to shake hands with famous faces in what is repeatedly and proudly referred to as the Underworld, among whom his co-writer Tel Curries ranks highly. Currie’s chapters are a little more blunt, perforated with yarns from robberies past. However you tell it: Biggs has spent 10 years in jail and the case is worthy of review.
Of course, he might come out and sell a few embarrassing tales of his life as a “rascal” but ultimately they might not be as embarrassing as keeping him inside for the sake of it.
RICHARD OSLEY
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