Summary
In 1963, a small-time South London carpenter joins the biggest robbery in British history for one reason - he knows a retired train driver who is semi-competent. And yet Ronnie Biggs will, for the next fifty years, be far more famous than the man who planned it, the rest of the gang who pulled it off, the train driver who was so brutally attacked, or the Scotland Yard detectives who solved the case.
How exactly is a criminal ‘legend’ born? Actor Daniel Mays delves into unheard Ronnie Biggs tapes and takes us back to the rubble of post-war London to find out …
Credits: Presenter - Daniel Mays Producers - Phoebe McIndoe & Jude Shapiro Executive Producer - Jack Howson Associate Exec - Chris Pickard Mix Engineering - Will Fitzpatrick Additional Production Support - Ashley Clivery Commissioning Producer - Sam Proffitt Commissioning Executive - Louise Kattenhorn Commissioning Editor - Richard Maddock
Contributors include: Professor Dick Hobbs, criminologist Nick Reynolds, sculptor and son of the Great Train Robbery gang leader Noel ‘Razor’ Smith, writer and former armed robber Brian Stone, cellmate of Biggs
A Peanut & Crumb production for Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.5 | The Most Haunted House in England, or a Victorian ghost hunters' elaborate hoax. |
| 0:12.7 | Witnesses to genuine poltergeist activity are at 1960s Yorkshire family with an overactive imagination. |
| 0:20.6 | Join me, Danny Robbins, and my team of paranormal experts as we dig deep into the past, |
| 0:26.4 | reopening classic cases and searching for the truths they left behind. |
| 0:32.1 | Uncanny cold cases. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.2 | Episodes of Gangster Presents, the story of Ronnie Biggs, |
| 0:39.4 | are released weekly wherever you get your BBC podcasts, |
| 0:42.6 | but if you can't wait, |
| 0:44.3 | you can listen to more episodes a week earlier than anywhere else. |
| 0:48.0 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:53.1 | A quick warning for you. |
| 0:55.9 | This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. |
| 1:01.5 | 1993. |
| 1:03.5 | People across Britain are winding down for the evening, putting on their pajamas, getting kids into bed. |
| 1:10.2 | And they're listening to this on BBC Radio. |
| 1:13.7 | You don't regret the robbery itself, which was described by the judge, |
| 1:18.0 | as being inspired by vast greed. |
| 1:20.4 | You've no result of stealing other people's money like that. |
| 1:22.9 | No, I'm totally involved in vast greed, I'm afraid. |
| 1:25.6 | Does it all not really go together to condone and glamourise what was a very serious crime? |
| 1:33.1 | I'm totally prepared to glamourise and condone a crime that happened 30 years ago. |
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