Soho nightclub boss Ronnie Knight, who's died at 89, was a ruthless criminal trends now
Cronies will insist, particularly now he is dead, that he wasn't really so bad. 'A rogue, but a very lovable one,' was the response of one misguided apologist as news of the death at 89 of Ronnie Knight, gangland figure and ex-husband of actress Barbara Windsor, emerged yesterday.
This was the image Knight loved to play up to. 'I only ever robbed the rich and I never hurt anyone,' he liked to say. But in a rare moment of introspection he admitted he was no heroic outlaw. 'Oh no, I wasn't Robin Hood — I was a robbing b*****d,' he smirked.
Indeed, this dapper playboy rubbed shoulders with some of London's nastiest, most violent gangsters including the sadistic Kray twins. His own criminality included handling the proceeds of the £6 million Security Express robbery in which a guard was threatened with being burned alive unless he handed over the keys to the vault. And then there was his admission that he once 'got away with murder' after being cleared of a brutal gangland slaying only to later gloat that he paid a contract killer to carry out the 'hit'.
It was this boast that led police to pressurise ministers into eventually overturning double jeopardy, the law protecting acquitted defendants from being tried a second time in light of new evidence.
Ronnie Knight, gangland figure and ex-husband of actress Barbara Windsor, has died aged 89
Knight was proof that with enough charm and swagger — and he had both in plenty — it was not that difficult to hoodwink people into thinking that he really was the endearing Cockney 'rascal' he liked to present himself as. 'Call me a convicted receiver of purloined goods, a baddie, a charmer or what you like,' he said. 'But armed robbery, real villainy, is not my scene.'
In the London underworld of the 1960s, he achieved prominence by running two of its most notorious watering holes, the Artistes And Repertoire Club in Soho's Charing Cross Road and its neighbour Tin Pan Alley.
Here Knight played host to the criminal fraternity and the demi-monde that enjoyed rubbing padded shoulders with it.
Showbiz names were always made welcome. Recalling one party thrown by the female impersonator Danny La Rue, he later described 'Noel Coward, tinkling away on the ivories for all he was worth' and James Bond star Roger Moore drawing 'the girls like horseflies to a cow-pat'.
Marriage to Miss Windsor, pin-up star of the Carry On films, only elevated his reputation. Inconveniently he was still married to his first wife June — mother of his two children — when he first met the comely former child star. 'I fancied her so much my front teeth ached,' Knight later wrote.
Marriage to Miss Windsor, pin-up star of the Carry On films, only elevated his reputation
Black-and-white pictures from the time show the two of them with Ronnie and Reggie Kray in El Morocco, the Chinatown club the twins bought and ran as part of their attempt to extend their influence into the West End.
'I was introduced to Barbara by a fellow who was an extra in the film business,' he later recalled. 'I thought 'she's nice', and called her up a couple of times, then started taking her out.'
It was only some time later that he chose to tell the actress that he was actually married with a five-year-old child and a wife who was eight months pregnant.
After securing his divorce, the couple married in a 9am ceremony at a register office in Tottenham, North London, in March 1964, followed by a drink in a pub with his brother, who was best man.
'It poured with rain and I cried on the way to the register office because it was such an awful way to get married,' Barbara later remembered. 'But Ronnie couldn't care less.'
If the wedding day was devoid of romance, so too was the honeymoon — the couple were accompanied by her Carry On co-star Kenneth Williams together with his mother and sister.
According to Windsor, Knight 'hated my showbusiness world. I'm sure he saw it as a rival. Among his own East End kind, he was top dog and confident but among my showbiz friends he felt inadequate'.
For all his cocky chauvinism, Knight was insecure. He once asked his wife if she had been to bed with a certain person before they met. 'When I said yes, he sulked for two days,' she recalled.
'He was a big baby,' adding: 'In those early days with Ronnie I was a bit of flash cow, wiggling all over the place with a tiny waist, little bum and big boobs and he didn't like other men looking at me.'
Mind you, she added, 'he could always handle himself well in a fight'. His fists came in handy when a former fiance, the singer Cliff Lawrence, enraged by Windsor's relationship with Knight, dragged her down the street by her hair.
Black-and-white pictures from the time show the two of them with Ronnie and Reggie Kray in El Morocco, the Chinatown club the twins bought and ran as part of their attempt to extend their influence into the West End
After a visit from Knight, Lawrence never bothered her again. It was Barbara, however, who was the family breadwinner.
'I was the one who paid the mortgage, rates and general household bills.
'I was in demand for films and TV and I was more than happy to be the provider.'
Knight was born into a criminal family in Hoxton, East London, with his brothers John and James introducing him to the local underworld. He bought a drinking club from the football manager Malcolm Allison, but he also had a side hustle in Soho pool tables and peep shows. But in the mid-1970s Windsor's career took a dive and suddenly money was tight.
Knight's life, however, changed for ever when his younger brother David was beaten up in an Islington pub. The Knight brothers went looking for the assailants in Soho. During the subsequent altercation, David was fatally stabbed by Alfredo 'Italian Tony' Zomparelli.
At his trial, Zomparelli pleaded self-defence and was jailed for four years for manslaughter. In September 1974, Zomparelli, now free, was shot dead in the
