Ronnie Knight, who's died at 89, was a ruthless criminal

‘I wasn’t Robin Hood… I was a robbing b*****d!’ His Cockney charm and swagger seduced Barbara Windsor Soho nightclub boss Ronnie Knight, who’s died at 89, was a ruthless criminal who virtually founded the Costa Del Crime, writes RICHARD KAY

• Ronnie Knight passed away at a nursing home in Cambridgeshire on Monday
• The ex-husband of Barbara Windsor rubbed shoulders with violent gangsters 
• But he played up to an image of his own creation of ‘a rogue, a very lovable one’  

Cronies will insist, particularly now he is dead, that he wasn’t really so bad. ‘A rogue, but a very lovable one,’ was the response of one misguided apologist as news of the death at 89 of Ronnie Knight, gangland figure and ex-husband of actress Barbara Windsor, emerged yesterday.

This was the image Knight loved to play up to. ‘I only ever robbed the rich and I never hurt anyone,’ he liked to say. But in a rare moment of introspection he admitted he was no heroic outlaw. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t Robin Hood — I was a robbing b*****d,’ he smirked.

Indeed, this dapper playboy rubbed shoulders with some of London’s nastiest, most violent gangsters including the sadistic Kray twins. His own criminality included handling the proceeds of the £6 million Security Express robbery in which a guard was threatened with being burned alive unless he handed over the keys to the vault. And then there was his admission that he once ‘got away with murder’ after being cleared of a brutal gangland slaying only to later gloat that he paid a contract killer to carry out the ‘hit’.

It was this boast that led police to pressurise ministers into eventually overturning double jeopardy, the law protecting acquitted defendants from being tried a second time in light of new evidence.

Ronnie Knight, gangland figure and ex-husband of actress Barbara Windsor, has died aged 89

Knight was proof that with enough charm and swagger — and he had both in plenty — it was not that difficult to hoodwink people into thinking that he really was the endearing Cockney ‘rascal’ he liked to present himself as. ‘Call me a convicted receiver of purloined goods, a baddie, a charmer or what you like,’ he said. ‘But armed robbery, real villainy, is not my scene.’

In the London underworld of the 1960s, he achieved prominence by running two of its most notorious watering holes, the Artistes And Repertoire Club in Soho’s Charing Cross Road and its neighbour Tin Pan Alley.

Here Knight played host to the criminal fraternity and the demi-monde that enjoyed rubbing padded shoulders with it.

Showbiz names were always made welcome. Recalling one party thrown by the female impersonator Danny La Rue, he later described ‘Noel Coward, tinkling away on the ivories for all he was worth’ and James Bond star Roger Moore drawing ‘the girls like horseflies to a cow-pat’.

Marriage to Miss Windsor, pin-up star of the Carry On films, only elevated his reputation. Inconveniently he was still married to his first wife June — mother of his two children — when he first met the comely former child star. ‘I fancied her so much my front teeth ached,’ Knight later wrote.

Marriage to Miss Windsor, pin-up star of the Carry On films, only elevated his reputation

Black-and-white pictures from the time show the two of them with Ronnie and Reggie Kray in El Morocco, the Chinatown club the twins bought and ran as part of their attempt to extend their influence into the West End.

READ MORE: ‘He was a bit of a rascal but he was a good rascal’: How Barbara Windsor recalled her gangster first husband Ronnie Knight – a good friend of the Krays – who has died at 89 after Parkinson’s battle

‘I was introduced to Barbara by a fellow who was an extra in the film business,’ he later recalled. ‘I thought ‘she’s nice’, and called her up a couple of times, then started taking her out.’

It was only some time later that he chose to tell the actress that he was actually married with a five-year-old child and a wife who was eight months pregnant.

After securing his divorce, the couple married in a 9am ceremony at a register office in Tottenham, North London, in March 1964, followed by a drink in a pub with his brother, who was best man.

‘It poured with rain and I cried on the way to the register office because it was such an awful way to get married,’ Barbara later remembered. ‘But Ronnie couldn’t care less.’

If the wedding day was devoid of romance, so too was the honeymoon — the couple were accompanied by her Carry On co-star Kenneth Williams together with his mother and sister.

According to Windsor, Knight ‘hated my showbusiness world. I’m sure he saw it as a rival. Among his own East End kind, he was top dog and confident but among my showbiz friends he felt inadequate’.

For all his cocky chauvinism, Knight was insecure. He once asked his wife if she had been to bed with a certain person before they met. ‘When I said yes, he sulked for two days,’ she recalled.

‘He was a big baby,’ adding: ‘In those early days with Ronnie I was a bit of flash cow, wiggling all over the place with a tiny waist, little bum and big boobs and he didn’t like other men looking at me.’

Mind you, she added, ‘he could always handle himself well in a fight’. His fists came in handy when a former fiance, the singer Cliff Lawrence, enraged by Windsor’s relationship with Knight, dragged her down the street by her hair.

Black-and-white pictures from the time show the two of them with Ronnie and Reggie Kray in El Morocco, the Chinatown club the twins bought and ran as part of their attempt to extend their influence into the West End

After a visit from Knight, Lawrence never bothered her again. It was Barbara, however, who was the family breadwinner.

‘I was the one who paid the mortgage, rates and general household bills.

‘I was in demand for films and TV and I was more than happy to be the provider.’

Knight was born into a criminal family in Hoxton, East London, with his brothers John and James introducing him to the local underworld. He bought a drinking club from the football manager Malcolm Allison, but he also had a side hustle in Soho pool tables and peep shows. But in the mid-1970s Windsor’s career took a dive and suddenly money was tight.

Knight’s life, however, changed for ever when his younger brother David was beaten up in an Islington pub. The Knight brothers went looking for the assailants in Soho. During the subsequent altercation, David was fatally stabbed by Alfredo ‘Italian Tony’ Zomparelli.

At his trial, Zomparelli pleaded self-defence and was jailed for four years for manslaughter. In September 1974, Zomparelli, now free, was shot dead in the Golden Goose arcade in Soho.

Six years later, Knight was arrested for the murder after a hitman, George Bradshaw, claimed that Knight had paid him £1,000 to carry out the killing. Knight denied any involvement. Barbara Windsor stood by him at the trial and he was acquitted.

Ronnie Knight leaving Hendon Magistrates Court in 2000 after he pleaded guilty to shoplifting from a branch of Waitrose

But the marriage did not survive. Both took lovers. Windsor, famously, embarked on an affair with actor and fellow Carry On co-star Sid James, and also enjoyed dalliances with footballer George Best and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees.

As for Knight, he slept with a younger woman in the marital bed while Barbara was away working.

Sensing that his luck was running out in Soho, Knight had built a villa in Fuengirola, Spain.

He fled there as a fugitive in January 1984, on the night his brother John was arrested for armed robbery from a Security Express depot in Shoreditch. Knight had the highest profile of the hundreds of villains who established themselves on what became known as the Costa del Crime, the sun-and-sangria bolthole where British criminals could then live openly without fear of extradition.

And he revelled in his role as one of its leaders. Knight was the biggest name of the gang dubbed the Famous Five, all wanted by Scotland Yard in connection with the Security Express robbery, who had fled to Spain to avoid arrest.

The others were Freddie Foreman, John Mason, Ronald Everett and Clifford Saxe, in whose East London pub the robbery was allegedly planned.

After Knight and Dame Barbara got divorced, he married Sue Haylock, pictured

Knight’s brother John was found guilty of taking part in the raid and his other brother James of receiving stolen cash. Detectives believe the robbery was to have been the swansong of the brothers, designed to provide their ‘pension’.

John’s arrest was the signal for Ronnie to flee to Spain. In a desperate call from Barcelona airport he begged Barbara Windsor, despite their failing 21-year marriage: ‘Don’t tell the Old Bill I was in on that blag.’

Knight had planned well. Using Windsor’s unsuspecting accountants — and unknown to his wife — he had moved more than £250,000 abroad, investing shrewdly in property on the booming Costa del Sol. With John, he already owned villa El Limonar (The Lemon Grove) at Benalmadena and added two flats on Marbella’s golden mile and a small townhouse in Mijas.

In an interview, Knight claimed the robbery had nothing to do with his departure from Britain. ‘The police said I was on the run, but I wasn’t. I was going to go anyway. I knew Barbara wasn’t going to go because she was fixed on this showbusiness thing. It was an addiction for her. I’d asked her to stop. I’d had enough money to look after both of us. But she didn’t want to miss a part.’

The couple divorced two years later. At El Limonar, meanwhile, he set up home with former barmaid Sue Haylock, a blonde 16 years his junior. Scotland Yard spent weeks in Spain secretly following the five and building their case — only for a Spanish police officer to leak details to a magazine.

Their operation was blown and the legend of the Costa del Crime born, with Knight at the forefront. When he married Haylock there in 1987 — with many criminals among the guests — he arrogantly sent glasses of champagne out to police monitoring the event.

Pictured in February 1980 -Dame Barbara with Knight

Even when Spain passed a law allowing it to kick out undesirables, Knight remained free. He and Foreman regularly held court to fellow Britons — but often spoke of missing England and even became nostalgic for rain.

Read more: The end of the Krays’ reign of terror: How East End gangster twins were finally arrested on murder charges 55 years ago today… before being found guilty at high-profile trial 

With cannabis being smuggled from nearby Morocco, drugs became big business in Spain. Police were unsure of Knight’s links to drugs, but believed that investments made with other Britons crashed when their operations were intercepted by customs officials.

Ironically, bad publicity about the Costa del Crime helped prompt a fall in the property market. Knight was forced to sell at cut prices and Spanish police began to move against British criminals.

In 1990, he decided to open his club — called R. Knight’s. But on the opening night, a jealous husband tried to knife his wife’s lover to death there and brawls became a regular feature.

By Christmas 1993, Knight was in a pitiful state. He had health problems brought on by drinking, his money had all but run out, he was desperately missing England and his passport had expired so he could not move elsewhere.

His wife was beginning to tire of him and nearly all his investment properties had been sold to fund his profligate lifestyle.

Citing his mother Nellie’s ailing health, he returned to Britain in 1994. His big mistake was to think that he would never be put on trial — ‘because no jury in the land could say they hadn’t heard of me’. In fact, he was in prison on remand when his mother died and did indeed have to stand trial, accused of handling more than £300,000 from the Security Express robbery.

Dame Barbara pouring champagne for her then- husband Knight with her mother Rose

‘Sue had promised to wait for me, but I stopped calling her when I got seven years. I loved her, I loved ’em all, but she was a young girl, younger than me. I didn’t want her to waste her life.

‘That’s the gentleman I am. She couldn’t come home because the police had told her she was in trouble, too.

‘They thought she was involved. When I left her, I said: ‘I’ll be back.’ I thought I would. Eventually, she did come home — but by then I’d found someone else.’

This was Diane Lumley, a mother of three 29 years his junior whom he had met while in prison.

They moved in together after his release, but the relationship ended in 2002.

But for Barbara Windsor, Ronnie Knight would have been a long forgotten member of the criminal underworld. His celebrity came from her.

How did he repay this debt? With a tawdry memoir in which he reviewed his ex-wife’s performance in the bedroom. These included impersonating Dick Turpin — ‘stand and deliver’ — and a fairy godmother — ‘in lacy suspenders, waving her magic wand’.

The good life, however, was long over. For much of the last two decades Knight, who had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had been living in sheltered accommodation for the elderly in Cambridge, dependent on the charity of friends and passing the days watching TV crime dramas.

Who knows — one day they may make a film of his life of crime.

Source: Read Full Article