BRAZIL: LEGENDARY GREAT TRAIN ROBBER RONALD BIGGS MAKES ADVERT FOR WOMEN'S LINGERIE.

Record ID: 184352

  • Title: BRAZIL: LEGENDARY GREAT TRAIN ROBBER RONALD BIGGS MAKES ADVERT FOR WOMEN'S LINGERIE.
  • Date: 26th January 2001
  • Summary: RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL. (JANUARY 25, 2001) (REUTERS--ACCESS ALL) 1. MV/GV/PAN: VARIOUS OF RONNIE BIGGS ARRIVING TO PHOTO SHOOT/ BRAZILIAN MODELS WEARING PLASTIC BRITISH POLICE HELMETS/ VARIOUS OF PHOTO SHOOT WITH MODELS AND BIGGS (6 SHOTS) 0.32 2. CU: (SOUNDBITE) (English) RONNIE BIGGS' SON MICHAEL BIGGS SAYING: "We have to remember what the Ronn
  • Embargoed: 10th February 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
  • Country: Brazil
  • Reuters ID: LVA3Z601NF6OX6395RUGJZND8MT1
  • Story Text: Legendary "Great Train Robber" Ronnie Biggs, still a
    fugitive from British justice after three decades, has
    embarked on a new money-making venture -- advertising women's
    underwear.



    Flanked by two svelte models wearing nothing but bra,
    panties, high heels and plastic British police helmets, the
    71-year-old former criminal posed on Thursday (January 25) for
    a 45-minute fashion shoot in Santa Tereza, Rio de Janeiro's
    bohemian hillside district.

    The models, brandishing fake truncheons, draped the
    British flag over Biggs' shoulders and occasionally tweaked
    his ears. Their underwear is part of a new collection
    playfully entitled "Surrender" from Brazil's largest lingerie
    firm Du Loren.

    Biggs escaped from a London prison in 1965 after serving
    15 months of a 30-year sentence for his part in the 1963
    "Great Train Robbery" of a Glasgow-to-London mail train,
    netting his gang $50 million at today's values in what was
    dubbed at the time the "Crime of the Century".

    Since 1970, Biggs has been living in Brazil where he ended
    up after fleeing from Australia. He has now won the right to
    live permanently in Brazil after the country's high court
    rejected a British request for his extradition.

    Now hunched and frail, Biggs is still unable to speak
    properly after suffering a severe stroke -- his second -- in
    September 1999 shortly after his 70th birthday.

    The lingerie ad is perhaps not the most bizarre of the
    money-making ventures embarked upon by Biggs, who says he has
    no money left from the 1963 robbery and survives by hosting
    barbecues for tourists and on royalties from his two books.

    His media heyday came in the 1970s, when he made a record
    about the robbery with British punk band The Sex Pistols and
    also starred in their film "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle"
    where he appeared lounging with the notorious rockers on Rio's
    famous Copacabana beach.

    The next venture was less exciting -- a television advert
    for an Australian hair restoration company.

    Although not all the "Great Train Robbers" were caught,
    those who were arrested ended up being sentenced to 30 years
    in jail. Some escaped and became transformed into folk heroes.

    The models draped over his arms on Thursday were too young
    to know the full history of Biggs' infamy.

    "I don't really know his story, I know he became famous
    after he robbed a train. I was too young to know the details,"
    said Milene Zardo, one of the truncheon-wielding "policemen".

    "He's become more of a legend in Brazil, those people who
    do fantastic things that nobody else manages to do," she said.

    The lingerie advertising campaign is due to be launched in
    Brazilian magazines in about a month.


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