Ronnie Biggs released 'to die', not to enjoy a last pint

Instead, he was promptly thrown into prison.

There were repeated attempts to convince a string of ministers and courts that he should be let out and his supporters feared he could die behind bars.

Biggs, who turns 80 this weekend, is a very old, very sick man, struck down by a series of strokes.

He is severely ill in hospital with pneumonia and doctors have said there is "not much hope".

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the decision to grant him "compassionate release" was made because he is not expected to recover.

Biggs is a much diminished figure from the cocky Cockney villain who, with a gang of other criminals, stole £2.6 million in used banknotes from the Glasgow to London mail train in August 1963.

It was an audacious heist, of which the courts took a dim view, handing Biggs and other gang members sentences of up to 30 years.

But Biggs had no intention of doing the time, and within 15 months he was out, and the story which secured his legend - his constant, and ultimately successful attempts to evade the authorities - began.

After scaling a 30ft wall, while other prisoners created a diversion, he escaped in a furniture van before fleeing the country.

He went to Paris for £40,000-worth of plastic surgery before travelling to Australia and living with his wife Charmian and two children.

In 1969 the authorities discovered his location, but before they could nab him, he went on the run again, this time to Brazil.

There he was tracked down by a reporter and later, Detective Inspector Jack Slipper of Scotland Yard. But the detective was foiled in his attempts to take Biggs home because the fugitive had fathered a child with his Brazilian lover, Raimunda de Castro.

For much of the next three decades Biggs lived in Rio, making what money he could from his notoriety.

Then in the late 1990s he had a series of strokes, leaving him in need of medical care.

Penniless, he returned to the UK aged 71 on a private jet laid on by The Sun newspaper, and was promptly locked up in Belmarsh high security prison.

He was later moved to a special unit for elderly prisoners at Norwich prison while he continued to fight for release.

That campaign proved fruitless, with both the courts and a string of home secretaries proving unsympathetic to his case.

Then, in June, the Parole Board recommended he be let out at the one-third point of his sentence. Its report found he was unrepentant about his life, but also unlikely to reoffend.

Mr Straw rejected Biggs' application for parole on the grounds that the robber was "wholly unrepentant" about his crimes.

On Saturday he will celebrate his 80th birthday, 46 years to the day since the raid.

His legal adviser Giovanni Di Stefano said Biggs was not being released to enjoy a pint in a pub or fly off to Rio, but to die.