From bikes and cinders TO GUNS AND GOLD

SPLIT WATERMAN’S daredevil antics and brushes with officialdom took on a whole new direction once he had quit speedway.

In 1968 he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to four years in jail for attempting to illegally export £10,000 worth of gold, having been arrested in Newhaven in 1967 while attempting to take a ferry to Dieppe. According to newspaper reports of the trial, the gold was said to be part of a £750,000 bullion robbery in Clerkenwell the previous year. The judge accepted Waterman wasn’t part of the gang who performed the bullion robbery, but said he was: “a useful ally to them, prepared to face danger and take risks, a gun runner in Africa, and was unable to resist the financial attraction and risk of adventure.”

The authorities had discovered the gold hidden in the hollowed chassis of a car owned by his fiancée, Avril Priston. Waterman also pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of two submachine guns, two rifles, three pistols and ammunition. He was also found guilty of possessing dies which could have been used for making £5 gold coins and half-crowns.

Avril Priston (38) pleaded guilty to conspiring with Waterman to export the gold, as well as possession of firearms. She was given a sixmonth prison sentence.

Once the pair had been released, they married in 1970 and moved to the Costa del Sol, but Waterman again found himself in trouble when, in 1977, he was given a three-and-half-year sentence by a court in Milan for possessing forged Spanish currency worth £500,000.