ROBERT HARDMAN: Final V-sign to Britain from Biggs as Great Train Robber goes Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber, died last month aged 84 A Brazilian flag draped over Union Flag across the coffin Biggs gave a two-fingered salute last time he was seen in public Great Train Robbers fled with £2.6m in 1963 - £46m in today's money Train driver Jack Mills was beaten over the head and never fully recovered By Robert Hardman Serenaded by a jazz band, a chapter of Hell's Angels, his family and more old geezers than on the Old Kent Road, Ronnie Biggs made his last escape yesterday afternoon - to the hereafter. His wicker coffin draped in the flags of Britain and his adopted Brazil, the best-known - if least important - of the Great Train Robbers was almost a figure of suburban respectability as he took his final bow in the same North London crematorium as Sigmund Freud, George Bernard Shaw and the Maharaja of Cooch-Behar. But here, too, were all the trappings of a traditional gangland funeral - minus the horse-drawn hearse and gold knuckledusters. The Great Train Robber's coffin, draped with a Union Flag, a Brazilian flag and a scarf of his beloved Arsenal football team is carried into Golders Green Crematorium Tribute: Biggs's granddaughter Ingrid and son Michael speak during the funeral service Guests had been respectfully asked not to dress in black or wear "aggressive or offensive jewellery." How thoughtful. The rules did not seem to apply to floral tributes, though. One mourner had sent one in the shape of Biggs's trademark V-sign. Shakespeare and the poems of Biggs the bard himself were liberally quoted in a service that drew large numbers of shaven-headed men in leather coats and a few hard-smoking women. How many actually knew the man? One of the Hell's Angels cheerfully admitted he was just a "hanger on," but said he was glad to be part of it all. There was also a smattering of celebrities from showbusiness and the criminocracy. Actor Steven Berkoff arrived late - "the traffic was murder" he told a congregation not unfamiliar with the real thing - to deliver his reflections on "a modern-day Ulysses." Drug smuggler-turned-author Howard Marks saluted "a man of great nobility" while admitting he had never actually met Biggs in person. Celebrity ex-gangster Dave Courtney arrived bearing a floral display in the shape of a train and the succinct inscription "Gutted." In loving memory: A copy of the order of service for the funeral of Ronnie Biggs Send off: The Hells Angels bikers arrive at the funeral, leading the coffin to the crematorium Armed robber and certified madman Charles Bronson also sent a bouquet from prison and a separate message that was read out during the service: "Ronnie was an icon, a man's man. Max respect to a diamond geezer. There was a lot of this sort of stuff all afternoon and on into the night as the mourners grew increasingly lachrymose at a boozer on the Finchley Road. Also represented was another strand of London criminal folklore in the form of Freddie "Brown Bread" Foreman, erstwhile henchman of the Kray twins. But for all the clapped-out tough guy posturing and half-hearted clenched fist salutes, the most genuine moment of the day was when Biggs's son, Michael, delivered a moving eulogy to the father who had, for many years, raised him as a single parent in Rio. Acknowledging that Biggs the villain had been a "petty crook who never had any real success," he spoke emotionally of the jazz-loving, samba-dancing, Arsenal-mad champion of the underdog who became "my dad, my mum, my entire family." Tribute: A six-piece Dixie band joined the procession for the final part of the journey to the crematorium. Leading the hearse and funeral cars, it played songs including When the Saints Come Marching In Defiance: Ronnie Biggs, seen last year when he made his final public appearance (left), gives a two-fingered salute. He was involved in the Great Train Robbery when he was much younger (right) in 1963 Michael was the product of Biggs's affair with a Brazilian dancer after he had fled to Rio from Australia when his cover was blown in 1970. His first wife, the devoted Charmian, remained in Australia with their two surviving sons (another boy, Nicky, died in a car accident). She still lives there, still bears his name and had sent her own recording of Shakespeare's sonnet - "Let me not to the marriage of true minds. Admit impediments ... This was more than goodbye to a famous ex-con. This was a farewell to that black-and-white world of old-style cops and robbers, of "Slipper of the Yard" and "Buster" Edwards, of bygone heists planned in smoke-filled pubs and exhaustively chronicled by Fleet Street for the benefit of a more innocent world. The Great Train Robbery remains the last criminal showstopper of modern times which did not involve guns, knives, death, sex or drugs. The 30-year sentence Biggs received would be inconceivable now. Hells Angels: The bikers went in front of the funeral cortege as the coffin was driven to the crematorium Tribute act: The bikers arrive at Ronnie Biggs' family's home in Barnet, north London, to make the journey to the crematorium For all the sentimental tosh spoken about it yesterday, however, it was no Ealing comedy. Train driver Jack Mills received a savage beating and many of those involved were never the same again. Biggs was not a key member of the gang that seized more than £2.6 million from the Glasgow-to- London mail train in August 1963. His job had merely been to supply a bent train driver to replace Mills (in the end, Biggs's man was not even up to the task). Biggs himself once likened his role to that of "teaboy." His notoriety and enduring celebrity followed his escape from Wandsworth Prison to Australia and, latterly, Brazil, where he spent 31 years raising his proverbial two fingers to British justice. Even after returning home in 2001, upon which he was immediately imprisoned, his attitude was much the same. Short of cash and laid low by three strokes, he threw himself at the mercy of the NHS and the British taxpayer, pleading: "I am a sick man. My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter. In 2009, Britain was taken for another ride when Biggs was released from prison in the belief that he was about to die. Two years later, he was still well enough to say that he was "proud" to have been one of the robbers, adding: "I would do it all again without the slightest hesitation!" Nine months ago, hunched in a wheelchair at the funeral of gang leader Bruce Reynolds, Biggs raised another two-fingered salute at the media. Yet it was the media whom Biggs had to thank for the one thing that kept the money rolling in long after his stolen loot ran out: the legend of Ronnie Biggs. Yesterday, that legend came to an end, far from the dancing girls of the Copacabana, in Golders Green crematorium. As his son admitted fondly, the old rogue had not even left enough money to cover last night's bar bill.