by Jeni Connibeer

He may once have earned his place on the Costa Del Crooked but the old cardigan-clad man in the dock at Hendon Magistrates Court looked more like Peter Stringfellow than a notorious criminal.

It was, in fact, former jailbird Ronnie Knight. The Barnet resident and former husband of Barbara Windsor, who served four years for his part in a £6million robbery, was last week fined £260 for stealing groceries from a Brent Cross supermarket.

Knight, 66, was spotted shoving £39.74 worth of salmon, prawns and toiletries into a Fenwicks carrier bag while pushing a trolley around Waitrose with his girlfriend, a Miss McCarthy.

When he was arrested after not paying for his surreptitious haul, police found he was carrying more than £270 in cash.

Knight, of Daneland, East Barnet, pleaded poverty as he told the court: 'I am just a pensioner. I'm living with my partner, she gets benefits for the children.

'I am just so sorry that I have done this, I'm very sorry,' he added.

Dressed in a beige cardigan and brown shirt and putting on his glasses to read the charges before him, Knight didn't exactly look the part of the hardened criminal.

And the magistrates decided to go easy on the pensioner who had a glamorous 11 years on the run in Marbella after the 1983 Security Express robbery. He returned to Britain in 1994 to serve a prison sentence and was released two years ago, although he is still on parole until 2001.

At court on Thursday, Knight was let off with a fine. Chairman of the bench Susan Shaw told him his crime was at the low end of the shoplifting scale.

'However, you can be sure that if you appear before this court again you will be sent back to prison,' she warned.