They shared a liking for sharp suits, nightclubs and the high-life. And on Spain's 'Costa Del Crime' Jimmy 'The Weed' Donnelly and Ronnie Knight had another thing in common - they were both on the run from the law.
Knight, who died this week aged 89, fled the UK as one of the so-called 'Famous Five' - following what was at the time the biggest cash heist in history - the infamous £6m Security Express robbery in Shoreditch, East London in 1983.
The Costa Del Sol was the ideal place to lay low for someone like Knight, a pal of the Krays with connections to London's underworld. A few years earlier, a century-old extradition treaty between the UK and Spain had expired, meaning there was little chance of wanted Britons being sent home to face justice.
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When he arrived on Spain's southern coast the Soho nightclub owner found a rum bunch of characters settled there. Among them was Jimmy 'The Weed' Donnelly, a member of Manchester's notorious Quality Street Gang and the inspiration for the Thin Lizzy song Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed.
Wythenshawe-raised Donnelly, so called because he was small in stature but grew on people, was one of the founder members of the QSG alongside his pal Jim Swords and his brother Joe, Vinnie and Louis Schiavo, Mick Brown, Denis Crolla and boxing promoter Jack Trickett.
With a liking for smart suits, flash cars and cocktail bars, they earned a reputation around town and were rumoured to be responsible for much of Manchester's crime in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But when Donnelly, who ran the Cotton Club on Stevenson Square, in what's now the Northern Quarter, was wanted for questioning over a mid-80s gangland shooting in east Manchester, in which he denied involvement, he also decided to take up residence on the Costa Del Sol, fleeing the UK in disguise on a 'snide passport'.
Jimmy Swords and other old pals from the Quality Street Gang were there, alongside 'faces from London, Liverpool, Tyneside and Scotland'.
"We all stuck together, no arguments, and could take over a whole pub on a night out. Life was good in Spain in the autumn of 1986, away from the pressures of police investigation," Donnelly wrote in his autobiography, 'Inside the Quality Street Gang'.
It was perhaps inevitable that Donnelly and Knight's paths would cross. They met through mutual friend Maurice 'Mo' O'Connor.
O'Connor, a Manchester-raised Dubliner, owned a bar where Donnelly and Knight became regular drinking partners. "One night I was in a bar with Ronnie and his new girlfriend Sue Haylock when his ex-wife Barbara Windsor stormed in and confronted them," Donnelly said.
"Sue did a runner and left Ronnie to it...Ronnie never tried to put Northern people down," Donnelly recalled. "I would go in his restaurant, the Mumtaz in Fuengirola, and he would sit with you and have a drink."
The pair became close pals and Donnelly was invited to Knight and Haylock's wedding, a lavish affair at the El Oceano beach club. "It was a bit of a turnout, the booze flowing, Sue dancing in a £3,000 wedding dress, the Flying Squad observing from unmarked cars and journalists hanging out of a helicopter overhead," said Donnelly.
Eventually Donnelly and Knight went into business together on a New Year's Eve cabaret show in Fuengirola. On the bill were the Clive Allen Sound, the house band from the Cotton Club, compere Jonathan Young, singer Angie Gold and comic Mick Miller of The Comedians fame. It was a sell-out.
"The whole Costa Del Crime turned out," said Donnelly. "We had a great night until the countdown to midnight, when suddenly cameras started flashing.
"The British and Spanish paparazzi had somehow infiltrated the event and were running around everywhere. We grabbed them and threw them out, but it spoiled things.
"One headline in the papers the following Sunday was something like 'Costa gangsters stick two fingers up to English law. They had a photo of me at the bar and called me [notorious East End gangster] Freddie Foreman!"
But the fun in the sun couldn't last. After 11 years on the run Knight, who denied scarpering to Europe because of the robbery, saying 'I just woke up that morning and thought, 'I'm going',' eventually returned to Britain in 1994. He was jailed for seven years for handling proceeds of the Security Express robbery, but not the heist itself.
After being released from prison in 1998 he spent the rest of his days penniless, living a quiet life in Cambridge. He said a few years later: "I don't want people feeling sorry for me because I'm Ronnie Knight.
"You have to put on a face, show you're the guv'nor. I don't want people to know I'm skint, because when you're a skint person nobody wants to know you."
Some time after the death of his wife Rita in 1988, Donnelly also returned home. And eventually the law caught up with him too.
He admitted trading while an undisclosed bankrupt, and was given a suspended prison sentence. "In all fairness some of us should be serving life for what we have done over the years so I couldn't complain," he later wrote.
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