Ronnie Knight, the former London club owner, wide boy, convicted criminal and ex-husband of the actor Barbara Windsor, played as big a part as anyone in establishing the south of Spain as the “Costa del Crime”. For many years he acted as an unofficial consul for British criminals seeking a home away from the bothersome gaze of the police.
Knight, who has died aged 89, first came to public attention in the 1960s through his marriage to Windsor, then a rising star of musicals, whom he had started dating while still married to his childhood sweetheart June, the mother of his two children. He dabbled in various illegal enterprises, including a Soho peep-show business, although some of the large profits had to be handed over to corrupt Scotland Yard detectives. A very sociable if flash character, he found his metier running the Artistes and Repertoire nightclub in London, which changed its name to the A&R. It became a hang-out for members of showbusiness and the underworld, reflecting the mutual fascination between those two worlds in the 60s and 70s.
Born to Nellie and Jim in east London, Knight grew up, after being briefly evacuated to Cambridge during the second world war, in the bombed-out East End. He had a nodding acquaintance with the Kray twins, for whom he carried out an occasional service. His younger brother, David, was stabbed to death in a gangland fight in 1970 in which Knight was also involved. Four years later the man who killed him, Alfredo Zomparelli, who had received a four-year sentence for manslaughter, was shot dead in the Golden Goose, a Soho amusement arcade. In 1980 Knight was accused of having arranged the murder of Zomparelli, something he had always vowed to do. He stood trial at the Old Bailey and was acquitted.
By 1985 he was divorced from Windsor, whose showbusiness career had flourished, and he had moved to Spain, where he and Windsor had already bought a property. At the time it was an attractive destination for UK criminals because of the lack of an extradition treaty between the two countries. He established himself in Fuengirola with a bar called Wyn’s and later with an Indian restaurant, both catering to the growing expat British population.
“If I’d got commission for every Londoner I’d introduced to the delights of the Costa del Sol,” he wrote in Blood and Revenge (2004), one of his two ghosted memoirs, “I would have earned fortunes.” In 1987 he became the unwilling subject of the television programme The Cook Report, which was investigating criminals on the run. No article or television show on the Costa del Crime was complete without a picture of the tanned Knight and his third wife, Sue Haylock, a young blonde whom he had met at the A&R. Their Spanish wedding attracted tabloid and police attention, with Knight supposedly sending out glasses of champagne to the plain-clothes officers detailed to monitor it.
Cocaine and alcohol took their toll, and the law was now on his tail in connection with his role in the £7m Security Express robbery in 1983; two of his brothers, Jimmy and Johnny, had already been convicted for their parts in it. In 1994 he was charged with handling £315,000 of the proceeds. Offered a £150,000 deal by the News of the World under which he would grant them and Sky News exclusive access as he returned to the UK to give himself up, Knight decided to leave Spain and face the music.
The deal did not work out as he had hoped and, to make matters worse, a photo of Knight in his cell in Wormwood Scrubs prison appeared in the press while he awaited trial, a clear contempt of court. He pleaded guilty to the handling charge and was jailed for seven years. The high-rolling Costa days were over, as was his marriage to Sue.
In 2002 he was reported to have launched a now-defunct website, Crooks Reunited, as a supposed forum for ex-cons and even former prison officers; sex offenders and paedophiles were told they could not join. He eventually moved into sheltered housing in Cambridge, suffering from Parkinson’s and dependent on the charity of friends.
He is survived by his children, Lorraine and Garry, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.
