WHAT do a Driffield Ronnie Biggs biographer and Katie Price's cage fighter ex-boyfriend Alex Reid have in common?

At first glance, it would appear not a lot, but the pair have both landed roles in the film Killer Bitch.

Mike Gray, who grew up in Driffield, was a close friend of the notorious Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.

He authored Ronnie Biggs – The Inside Story and was asked to take on the role of a thug by producer and director friend Liam Galvin.

The violent film, set in Surrey, will premiere in London's Leicester Square in March.

Mr Gray, who still has relatives in Driffield and Bridlington, said: "It is a small part. It's not going to make me into the next Michael Caine. I play one of the bad guys in a pub scene. I am a friend of the barman. I'm in a pub before a fight breaks out."

The plot focuses on a woman, played by former children's TV actress Yvette Rowland, who has to kill five people, to save her friends and family.

Mr Gray befriended the film's director through the Free Ronnie Biggs Campaign, which succeeded in getting the 80-year-old released from prison on compassionate grounds in August.

"Liam kindly allowed me to promote my book," said Mr Gray, 52, who now lives in Kent. "In one scene I am reading it."

Along with other gang members, Biggs stole £2.6m – the equivalent of about £40m today – after holding up a mail train from Glasgow to London in the early hours of August 8, 1963.

In 1965, Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison and lived as a fugitive for 36 years, voluntarily returning to the UK in 2001. He spent several years in prison and as health declined.

Grandfather-of-one Mr Gray, whose family arrived in East Yorkshire in the mid-1950s after his father was offered a job at HMP Hull, said his fascination with the Biggs story began as a child.

"I just started off collecting newspaper cuttings for a school project," he said.

"In 1989, I wrote to Ronnie in Brazil, where he was at the time. A friendship was struck up and we've kept in touch."