RONNIE BIGGS hopes to be out of jail in time for his 80th birthday in the summer.
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The Great Train Robber is to apply to the Parole Board for early release from Norwich prison (pictured) and the board will then pass on its recommendation to the Home Secretary Jack Straw.
Previously, Straw and his predecessors have turned down pleas for release, which were based on health grounds, but this time around Biggs’ family is more confident: Biggs has now served a third of the original 30-year sentence, which is a common time for parole-based release.
“I think it’s the obvious thing to do,” said son Michael.
“If other people are entitled to get parole, why shouldn’t my father? He represents no threat to society.”
Michael Biggs says a likely parole date would be 3 July, well in time for his dad’s birthday on 8 August, coincidentally the date of the Great Train Robbery.
Lambeth-born Ronnie Biggs was part of a gang that robbed £2.6M from a London-bound mail train back in 1963.
The gang was captured and Biggs spent nearly two years inside before his escape from Wandsworth prison and subsequent run to Brazil, which didn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK.
In Rio, Biggs used his charisma to become a celebrity and attracted a succession of tourists to his bar, including punk pioneers the Sex Pistols, who penned a ditty in his honour – No One is Innocent – which featured the immortal lines:
“Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk/Now he says he’s seen the light and sold his soul to punk.”
Health problems and old age saw Biggs return to Britain in 2001, when he was re-arrested and incarcerated.
