Det Chief Sup Jack Slipper: While detectives may like to be remembered for the crimes they solved and the criminals they arrested, former London police officer Det Chief Supt Jack Slipper, who has died at the age of 81, will always be associated with the one that got away.
For it was "Slipper of the Yard" who had the indignity in 1974 of having to return from Rio de Janeiro empty-handed after great train robber Ronnie Biggs had eluded arrest because he was about to father a Brazilian child and could thus not be extradited to Britain.
In fact, Slipper's role as a senior detective in London's Metropolitan police was much more significant over the years than that one incident might indicate.
One of the old school of detectives, right down to his pencil moustache and his swooping eagle Flying Squad tie, Slipper entered the police after serving as an electrician's apprentice and in the RAF, where he was a proficient boxer. He rose swiftly and was involved in investigating one of the biggest robberies of the 1970s at the Bank of America in London. As operational head of the Flying Squad, Slipper had a reputation for doggedness.
It was the 1963 great train robbery, however, that was to give him his greatest public prominence. He was a detective sergeant in the squad that successfully tracked down most of the robbers involved and saw them jailed for sentences of 30 years, only for one of them, Biggs, to effect an audacious escape from Wandsworth jail in London.
As one of the last of the squad still serving, Slipper was alerted by the Daily Express in 1974 that Biggs had been located in Rio. He flew to Brazil hoping to bring him back, but he had underestimated the wily Biggs, whose girlfriend, Raimunda, announced that she was expecting his child.
The failure to bring Biggs home and the subsequent jollity that the "slip-up" afforded the media continued to rankle. When the BBC made a television film of the saga, The Great Paper Chase, in which Jeremy Kemp played Slipper, he sued on the grounds that he had been portrayed as a clueless buffoon. He won £50,000 in damages and an apology from the BBC in 1990 after a libel action financed by the late Sir James Goldsmith.
He gained some belated satisfaction when Biggs, who is said by his family to be near death now, finally came back under his own steam because of illness.
After his retirement, "Slipper of the Yard", as he was always known, worked for a further 16 years with a construction and engineering firm and was able to spend more time on the golf course at Sudbury.
He often found himself in demand as a media commentator and gamely relived the Biggs episode, saying that he felt some sympathy for the ailing robber.
In his role as pundit, he did not take himself too seriously and was happy to share his reminiscences and appear in documentaries. He said that he did not think he would have joined the police of today because it is "too political".
His wife of 57 years, Annie, two daughters and five grandchildren survive him.
Jack Slipper, born May 1924; died August 24th, 2005