Video footage of Biggs released

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The lawyer for Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has released video footage showing the 80-year-old celebrating his birthday.

Biggs is still at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital where he is being treated for pneumonia.

Giovanni di Stefano said he wanted to counter some media claims that Biggs is making a miraculous return to health.

Mr di Stefano said the pictures showed a sick man whose family still hoped he would be moved to a London care home.

Biggs, who was granted compassionate release from his prison sentence last week, has undergone surgery to replace a feeding tube.

He turned 80 on Saturday on the 46th anniversary of the robbery.

Mr di Stefano, who released the footage to Radio 4's PM programme, said: "We hope by the weekend or early next week if the doctors think it is appropriate he can be transferred.

Biggs was in his mid-30s when he went on the run

"Of course he will still be under 24-hour care. He's still very ill indeed."

On Sunday, Biggs said he wanted to carry on living "to spite those who want me dead".

He said: "I've got a bit of living to do yet."

Last Friday, the prison guards watching Biggs were withdrawn from his bedside after his formal release papers were signed.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he was releasing Biggs because he was "gravely ill".

Five weeks earlier he rejected a recommendation by the parole board that Biggs be freed, accusing him of being "unrepentant".

Biggs was part of a 15-strong gang which attacked the Glasgow to London mail train at Ledburn in Buckinghamshire in 1963 and made off with £2.6m.

The train's driver, Jack Mills, suffered head injuries during the robbery.

Biggs, from Lambeth, south London, was given a 30-year sentence but escaped after 15 months and lived in Australia and Brazil, where his son Michael was born.