The Biggs Time

Ronnie Biggs would admit he's no saint. Sentenced to 30 years for his part in the Great Train Robbery - which took place on a cold English morning in August 1963 - he's the legendary gangster who escaped to taunt the British establishment, sing with the Sex Pistols and tan with bikini-clad Brazilian beach girls, Pina Colada in hand: a hard man, the rogue who got away. But for his son, 29-year-old Michael, Ronnie Biggs is the father who "fed me, clothed me, loved me". Michael knew the devoted single dad trying to go straight who, when prohibited from working legally, traded on the only skill he could short of organized crime - being himself. Father and son grew up together, relying only on each other, with Michael rescuing his dad from disaster on more than one occasion, not least when Ron was kidnapped in 1981. By making a televised appeal for his return, Michael brought the Brazilian government to his father's aid - and inadvertently kick-started his own fairy-tale performing career. There followed a larger-than-life tale of sex, drugs and platinum-selling boy-band pop.
Michael talks candidly about his return to London with his ailing father to face the full weight of British justice, and offers Ronnie's insights into the planning and execution of the Great Train Robbery itself. Crime, music, sex in the sun, drugs by the pool, innocence, experience, kidnapping (twice) and love - "The Biggs Time" is the extraordinary tale of two lives that could never be called average.