Ronnie's great escape

IT was not the shocking Great Train Robbery but his great escape which made Ronnie Biggs a household name.

- BY MATT ROPER

The petty criminal was a late recruit to the gang and only got a small share of the £2.6million stolen from the Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963.

Just three weeks later, his fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle at the mob's farm hideout, and in April 1964 he was jailed for 30 years.

Biggs was destined to be a footnote in one of Britain's most notorious crimes until a moment 15 months into his sentence. On Tuesday it will be 60 years since he escaped prison.

He would become the world's most famous fugitive, starting a new life in Brazil and evading capture for 36 years.

Biggs was sent to Wandsworth prison in South London in 1964 but was soon smuggling in cans of lobster and crab meat and listening to music on an illicit radio.

He later wrote in his autobiography how his escape was inspired by The Seekers' 1965 hit I'll Never Find Another You. The song includes the line: “There's a new world somewhere, they call it the promised land.”

Biggs later told Chris Pickard, his ghostwriter and best pal in Brazil, how he and fellow inmate Paul Seabourne planned the escape.

Chris says they ruled out using a helicopter because it would be too dangerous but Biggs worked out the height of the 25ft exercise yard's external wall by counting bricks.

"That was higher than a removal van, but if you put an extension on the top of the van it could reach the top."

Seabourne was released in April 1965 and started coordinating the jail break from the outside. He passed information to Biggs through lawyers of another prisoner, Eric Flower, who was due to be sentenced for armed robbery and planned to escape with him.