What price freedom? And why should you never wear crocodile shoes when you’re on the run?!

While the rest of the Great Train Robbery gang are serving thirty-year sentences, the runaways are enjoying the delights of mid-sixties Paris and Las Vegas. But the life of an outlaw is not all about cabaret clubs, Frank Sinatra residencies, and sweet freedom … painful plastic surgery and familial misery is part of the package too.

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A Peanut & Crumb production for Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds

We’re in Wandsworth Prison, where the lights never go out. And where freedom for Ronnie Biggs might only be a chess game or a rope climb away …

Meanwhile - outside the jail walls - the British establishment is shaking under the weight of working-class anger, the Profumo affair, the Swinging Sixties, and a media frenzy at the severe sentences handed down to the Great Train Robbers.

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A Peanut & Crumb production for Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds

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 …

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Contributors include:

A Peanut & Crumb production for Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds

How did a small-time carpenter with a minor and fumbled role in a 1963 violent heist become Britain’s most famous fugitive and - for many - an unlikely folk hero? From gangland tea boy to Brazilian playboy, this series recounts the controversial rollercoaster life of Ronnie Biggs in his own words, through previously unheard recordings.

Actor Daniel Mays, who portrayed the Great Train Robber in a major ITV drama, hosts the podcast, marking the 25th anniversary of Biggs’ return to Britain to face justice after 36 years on the run.

Listen first on BBC Sounds from May 7th, 2026.

A Peanut & Crumb production for Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds

It’s the 1990s and Wo Shing Wo gangsters think they’re untouchable. Georgie Pai is fighting yet another deportation order after being caught in the UK again. He’s granted bail on the condition that he reports weekly to a local police station.

Meanwhile, a team of television journalists set up a sting in Manchester, aiming to expose how the Triads operate. The broadcast is devastating, a huge ‘loss of face’, which in the eyes of many in the Chinese community turns Georgie Pai from a feared villain to laughingstock overnight. Georgie Pai ends up fleeing to Cheltenham, leaving the Triad life behind him. But in the gang world, there’s always someone waiting in the wings to become top dog.

Presenter: Livvy Haydock

Archive: The Cook Report: Meet The Triads (Central Television, ITV)

A video war is raging across Britain’s Chinatowns, fuelled by a booming market for Hong Kong films and soaps, copied and rented out for huge profit. In Manchester, Wo Shing Wo quickly seizes control, establishing a near-monopoly on the lucrative video rental trade.

But where money flows, so does violence. In Glasgow, restaurant owner Philip Wong is brutally murdered by contract killers wielding machetes. Police suspect his death came after he refused to cooperate with Wo Shing Wo, who demanded a share of his profitable Chinese video business. Despite investigations, the three men wanted for the murder have never been traced.

Presenter: Livvy Haydock

Archive: The Cook Report: Meet The Triads (Central Television, ITV)

By the 1980s, Georgie Pai has been arrested in Glastonbury for overstaying a tourist visa, found guilty of terrorising Chinese communities in Southampton, and deported back to Hong Kong. But borders are no barrier for a man with the right connections. He slips back into Britain and continues to expand his empire.

Manchester becomes his nerve centre as police begin building a database of suspected Triad gangsters. But with Wo Shing Wo’s growing power comes a rising tide of violence. One of Georgie Pai’s associates is brutally attacked with machetes, a warning that it is far from an isolated incident. Across the UK, violent clashes between rival Triad factions are becoming alarmingly common, each gang carving up territory in a bloody, escalating turf war.

Presenter: Livvy Haydock

Two Hong Kong nationals are arrested in Southampton after guns are found in a vehicle. One of them speaks to police, revealing that a flourishing protection racket is operating right under their noses. He also provides the name of their gang leader – Georgie Pai. Hampshire Constabulary sets up a Triad squad but quickly encounters a wall of silence. The terrified community fears not only for themselves but also for their relatives back in Hong Kong.

Four hundred miles away in Glasgow, detectives hear similar reports of businesses being extorted and they hear that name again… Georgie Pai. He’s now on the radar of police across the country and under scrutiny from immigration authorities. But as his criminal empire grows, he forgets to renew his tourist visa. Georgie Pai is deported back to Hong Kong for the first time, but even in exile, he continues pulling the strings.

Presenter: Livvy Haydock

From the neon-lit Chinatowns of Britain to the back streets of Hong Kong, we learn why the Triads were feared by so many. The secret societies were formed hundreds of years ago as resistance movements but morphed into organised crime. Triad membership has long been outlawed in Hong Kong, but for decades they were a powerful and insidious force. Their influence stretched across continents, with the groups involved in drugs, extortion, prostitution, armed robbery, kidnappings and loan sharking.

We visit Georgie Pai’s birthplace, a rural village close to the border of mainland China. Through those who knew him and the history of the region, we uncover how he was recruited into Wo Shing Wo and track his rise to the position of Red Pole – an enforcer with an army of disciples. But all that power can come at a cost.

Presenter: Livvy Haydock

Archive: Drunken Master II: Golden Harvest, Paragon Films, Hong Kong Stuntmen Association. Directed by Chia-Liang Liu and Jackie Chan.

In 1970s Britain, Chinese-heritage migrants worked long hours in restaurants and takeaways to build their new lives. But as the diaspora established itself, the gangs they thought they’d left behind in Hong Kong began to follow, quietly feeding off the very people they claimed to protect.

Back in Hong Kong, Georgie Pai was already a senior member of Wo Shing Wo, one of the most feared Triad societies operating in the region's underworld. Triads are known for their rigid hierarchy, blood-sworn loyalty and reputation for ruthless enforcement. Georgie Pai travelled to the UK on a tourist visa and began working at his parents’ takeaway in Glastonbury. From there, he united scattered Triad factions around the country and recruited loyal foot soldiers. He built an extortion network targeting Chinese communities, with business owners ordered to pay protection cash. Those who refused were brutally punished.

Presenter - Livvy Haydock

Archive – The Cook Report: Meet The Triads (Central Television, ITV)