Entertainment
Ronnie Biggs on the day the Express paid him a fortune and called cops | Books | Entertainment
Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs (Image: Getty)
Great train robber Ronnie Biggs was relaxing in his trunks and thinking of the £35,000 fee a newspaper interview had just netted him, when he heard the knock at the door he had been dreading for nearly a decade.
Biggs instantly recognised the tall man who entered room 909 of the Trocadero Hotel on Copacabana beachfront as “Old Bill” from London and swore.
On his 34th birthday, in the early hours of August 8, 1963, Biggs was part of a 16-strong gang which boarded and robbed an overnight train in Buckinghamshire which was carrying sacks full of cash from Glasgow to London.
The brazen heist netted more than £2.6million (£50million today).
Twelve of the men, including Ronnie, were caught following a major manhunt.
In 1964 Biggs was jailed for 30 years, but in July 1965, after just 15 months inside Wandsworth Prison, he escaped.
READ MORE: Bigg’s boy ‘is not his son’
He travelled to Paris where he had a facelift in a bid to disguise himself – and was joined by wife Charmian.
They moved to Australia and had their third son Farley in April 1967.
In 1970 Biggs chose to move alone to Brazil under the name of Michael Haynes.
He enjoyed his time on the run with a string of girlfriends, but after three years he heard that dreaded knock on the door.
Biggs said: “I was sitting on the floor still wearing swimming trunks and, regardless of what has been written or reported in the past, I simply said, ‘Oh, f***!’
“To give him his full title, it was Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper, head of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, who had stalked into the room.
“‘Long time, no see’, he said. ‘I think you know who I am? I certainly know who you are and I’m arresting you. Where are your clothes?’”
Ronnie Biggs under arrest, 1963 (Image: Getty)
The late crook’s description of his arrest while on the run in Brazil features in a new posthumous autobiography to be published on the 60th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery on Tuesday.
It promises extraordinary new details about his time on the run.
The ‘‘autobiography” has been written by his pal Christopher Pickard, 10 years after his death on December 18, 2013.
Mr Pickard helped Biggs write his first autobiography Ronnie Biggs: Odd Man Out, The Last Straw, in 2011, but said: “Ron asked me to complete his story once he had left us stage left.”
Before Mr Slipper’s unexpected knock at the door, Biggs had been posing in his trunks with Brazilian girlfriend Raimunda Nascimento de Castro for Daily Express photographer Bill Lovelace.
The same morning she had also told Biggs she might be pregnant with what would be his fourth child. It was the third day Biggs had spent with Mr Lovelace and reporter Colin Mackenzie, whom the paper had flown out for the scoop of the decade after tracking him down.
Ronnie with Express journalists, Mackenzie, Lovelace and O’Flaherty (Image: )
On January 30, 1974, Biggs and Mr Mackenzie had discussed how much the robber would be paid for the exclusive.
Biggs said: “I asked Mackenzie how much I was being offered for my story.
“‘How much do you want?’ he asked.
“‘£50,000’, I suggested.
“‘My office has only authorised me to go as high as £35,000’, Mackenzie said, looking me straight in the eye. I reached out to shake hands with the representative of the Daily Express.” The fee would have been more than £300,000 in today’s money.
Biggs said that as part of the agreement he would return with the Express reporter to the UK to complete his sentence.
However, behind the scenes Daily Express editor Brian Hitchen had tipped off Scotland Yard and knew Slipper would be making his unannounced visit to bring Biggs back. Biggs told how once Slipper arrived, he was resigned to the fact he was on his way home.
However, it was not as simple to return Biggs as Slipper had hoped as there was no British extradition treaty with Brazil and the country itself was concerned about his conduct of making an arrest in its jurisdiction. Biggs revealed: “I was still unaware of the Daily Express’s double cross, believing that Mackenzie and Lovelace had been followed to Brazil.
“Mackenzie swore later that he had no idea that his superiors at the Daily Express had contacted the Yard.
“However, according to Slipper in his biography, Slipper of the Yard, the Express had tipped off the Yard from the word go, but did not tell Mackenzie at first.
“But Slipper did meet with Mackenzie in London prior to the trip along with Hitchen and the Express legal adviser.
“Mackenzie subsequently told Slipper that he planned to tip me off about the Yard, but he expected Slipper to turn up on the Sunday and not the Friday.”
Slipper ultimately flew back without Biggs with an infamous image of him next to an empty seat which was used in the Daily Express.
As Raimunda was pregnant with Biggs’s fourth child Michael, who was born later in 1974, Brazil would not extradite him because she was Brazilian.
Biggs remained there another 27 years until he finally came back to the UK aged 71 in May 2001, and was immediately arrested and sent to Belmarsh Prison.
While in prison in July 2002, he married Raimunda.
He was released two days before his 80th birthday on the grounds of ill health, and died four years later.
Mr Pickard signed off the autobiography: “The funeral made front page news in the UK, Brazil and around the world.
“Like it or not Ronald Arthur Biggs was and remains a global punk and pop icon… love him or hate him, you could not ignore Ronnie Biggs.”
- The Great Train Robber: My Autobiography by Chris Pickard (John Blake Publishing Ltd, £9.99) is available to order from Express Bookshop from Tuesday. To order a copy for £9.99 visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25
In the often meticulously controlled world of Stanley Kubrick films, it’s hard to imagine anything making it into the final cut without first going through rounds of rewrites, rehearsals, and retakes.
But in Full Metal Jacket, one of the film’s most unforgettable sequences – the boot camp barrage of insults hurled by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman – came not from a polished script, but from a real-life drill instructor.
A Vietnam War veteran and former Marine drill instructor at the real-life Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, R. Lee Ermey wasn’t even cast in the role to begin with.
Before stepping in front of the camera, Ermey was hired as a technical adviser, brought on to coach actors on how to convincingly portray life in Marine Corps boot camp.
Kubrick, known for his methodical directing style and tendency to exert creative control over every detail, had originally cast actor Tim Colceri in the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.
But after watching Ermey perform an off-the-cuff demonstration of how a real drill instructor would address new recruits, Kubrick was so impressed that he rethought the role entirely.
To land the part, Ermey filmed a 15-minute tape of himself yelling insults while being pelted with tennis balls and oranges off-camera – just to prove he could keep his composure and stay in character.
Kubrick was reportedly so taken by the performance that he rewrote the structure of the film’s first half around Ermey’s delivery.
Almost every line said by Hartman in the film’s boot camp sequences – the put-downs, the threats, the dark humour – was improvised or ad-libbed. The actor prepared his own lines based on years of experience in real Marine Corps training and delivered them with brutal conviction.
Full Metal Jacket, released in 1987, was Kubrick’s penultimate film and stands among his most divisive. Some critics found its two-part structure – the first half at boot camp, the second in war-torn Vietnam – jarring, but nearly all agreed that the opening act was unforgettable, largely because of Ermey.
The raw power of his performance earned him a nomination for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor. He went on to appear in about 60 films after that – mostly in roles involving military positions and authority figures – inlcuding a voice role in the Toy Story franchise. He passed away from complicatons related to pneumonia in 2018.
Warning – this article contains spoilers for Havoc.
Havoc director Gareth Evans has addressed the possibility of a sequel to his blistering new action thriller for Netflix.
However, he’ll have to overcome this one major obstacle if he wants to flesh out this sprawling criminal underworld into a franchise.
Venom A-lister Tom Hardy leads the thriller as Walker, a grizzled detective in a fictional American city who delves into a sprawling criminal underworld while battling with a past mistake.
Speaking exclusively to Express Online, the Gangs of London and The Raid director hinted he’s definitely been thinking about a follow-up, even if he can’t confirm it just yet.
“I get a kick out of doing world-build elements whenever we do a project,” Evans said.
“So with The Raid and The Raid 2, it’s set in Jakarta, but it’s not really Jakarta, it’s sort of my version of it.
“So this is the same thing. You create the city almost like a Grand Theft Auto sandbox. So who knows what other territories and streets [there are]?”
Although Evans would leap at the opportunity to continue Walker’s story if Havoc is successful, fans should expect a sequel to look a lot different after the bloodbath in the first outing.
Most of the film’s antagonists, as well as a number of Walker’s allies including mayor Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), perish in the carnage, so a possible follow-up would have to introduce a number of new characters.
“We kill a lot of people in the film!” Evans admitted. “So I probably have to originate a few new people to add to the mix.
“But yeah, it’s a world and a tone that I really enjoyed creating so I wouldn’t be averse to going back into it.”
Not only is Evans brewing the beginnings of a possible sequel, but his leading man Hardy is apparently not against reprising his role.
“We had chats about it on set,” the director confirmed. “So we’ll see, watch this space.”
Havoc’s stunt coordinator Jude Poyer also told the Express he “can’t talk about [Havoc 2]” just yet, but confirmed he’ll definitely be working with Evans in the future.
Praising the film’s biggest strengths, he shared: “People will talk about the spectacle and the action of Havoc, which I’m happy about, but this is a film with a lot of heart.
“I think about the performances by Forest Whitaker, by Justin Cornwell, by Yeo Yann Yann, who’s just incredible. We don’t have cartoon heroes and villains in this movie.
“Everybody’s complicated and a shade of grey and that makes Havoc doubly special.”
Hopefully the action and characters will resonate with fans and Evans will be back soon for another round with Tom Hardy’s latest action hero.
Havoc is available to stream on Netflix.
Entertainment
Tom Hanks World War 2 epic sequel announced with Stephen Graham | Films | Entertainment
Back in 2020, Tom Hanks starred in the film adaptation of CS Forester’s 1955 novel The Good Shepherd.
The World War 2 story follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment, leading a multi-national escort destroyer group to defend an Allied convoy from German U-boats.
Set during the Battle of the Atlantic, Greyhound stars Hanks as Commander Ernie Krause, a Christian Naval officer whose mission is analogous to Psalm 23.
The Bible poem written by King David talks of God as the good shepherd who guides the Old Testament monarch through the valley of the shadow of death as his enemies surround him.
The 90-minute thriller received positive reviews and remains in Apple TV+’s Film Top 10 to this day.
Now Hanks is set to reprise the role in a sequel set two years on. This time the action begins with the Greyhound crew at D-Day before heading to the Pacific Theatre. Set to shoot in January 2026, Adolescence star Stephen Graham is in talks to reprise his role as Lieutenant Commander Charlie Cole, according to Deadline.
A release date is TBC, but we’d guess the film will be on Apple TV+ in 2027.
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