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Another of Spain’s long-term residents, the Great Train Robber, Charlie Wilson, had been shot dead in 1990. And for reasons no one has quite been able to explain, Knight had been beaten up at his nightclub and put in hospital two years ago.The club had also been the scene of stabbings, shootings and punch-ups and the police were said to be about close it down.If true, then these were changed days for the man who grew up in the East End, leaving school at 14 to work as a £2.50-a-week upholsterer and then as a rag-and-bone man, before graduating to Soho strip joints and peep shows.Eventually he became a Soho club owner, emerging from decent obscurity in1980 when he stood trial for the murder of “Italian Tony” Zomparelli who had stabbed to death Knight’s younger brother, David, in a nightclub.Zomparelli was shot dead in Soho on his release, but Knight, who was said to have paid for the killing, was acquitted after his wife, Miss Windsor, gave evidence in court. He was coming back to “clear his name” and see his mum, Nellie, 87, who was ill with Parkinson’s disease.Fellow villains in Spain saw it differently. They saw a man whose businesses – an Indian restaurant called Mumtaz and a nightclub, RKnights – were in financial difficulties, and who feared for his safety at the hands of a new breed of criminals who had moved into the area. Not just any old copper, though, Detective Chief Inspector Reid McGeorge, of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, and all courtesy of the Sun newspaper.The newspaper, with Sky Television, had paid a sum reputed to be about £50,000 for the privilege of taking a few final snaps of Mr Knight and his third wife, Sue Haylock, sipping champagne at their villa at Benalmadena, on the Costa del Sol.Across five pages of the newspaper readers were treated to pictures of “Ron” looking “tanned and relaxed”. Others, of course, remain soaking up the sun and sipping sangria. But Knight had a background that guaranteed him an enduring interest from Britain’s more lurid tabloids: a history of involvement with Soho strip joints, links with East End villains of the Sixties, and husband of 23 years to Barbara “Babs” Windsor, original Cockney and Carry On actress.
It was a role he played to the hilt, right to the end when he returned to England, Luton airport no less, and into the welcoming arms of the law.

Judge Gordon said he therefore would not be able to make a compensation orderin favour of Security Express. He told Knight: “You benefited by an enormous amount and not one penny has been recovered.”. The jailing of Ronnie Knight yesterday all but marked the end of an era. Of the villains who fled to Spain’s so-called Costa del Crime, he was probably one of the more colourful, and certainly one of the best known. Several months after the robbery, she bought a new Mercedes-Benz with bundles of bank notes in “thousand-pound wads”, Mr Worsley said.The bulk of the money, though, was transferred from Knight’s accountants to bank accounts in Spain and eventually spent on several flats, an Indian restaurant and a nightclub. Indigenous Brits will cheerfully guess rather than leave any unanswered. The selection procedure included aptitude tests in which Asian candidates did disproportionately badly.

Eight unselected Asian guards brought their case to an industrial tribunal. Again, the case was settled out of court.Dr Steve Blinkhorn, a chartered occupational psychologist whom British Rail brought in as an expert witness, pointed out that the verbal and numerical skills on which the guards were being tested were not relevant to a driving job, and went on to say; “If English isn’t your first language, and if, also, you are unused to native British ways, you are at a disadvantage; for example, with a multiple choice questionnaire. The Myers Briggs interpretation gives no account of that conflict.”Not all psychometric tests are personality tests; there are also aptitude tests, designed to assess the subject’s general logical ability, verbal, numerical and technical reasoning. Although aptitude tests are thought to be more accurate in predicting job performance than personality tests, their use has none the less attracted a good deal of criticism.In 1991, guards working for British Rail were invited to apply to become trainee drivers. What makes people individual are their internal conflicts and the ways in which they juggle with these conflicts. The interviewer accepted the test conclusions without taking into account my circumstances, which were that I had enjoyed an active social life in a close-knit expatriate community and then returned to a country where I had few friends or contacts.