• From the early 1960s a brazen band of audacious Australian thieves and con artists made headlines in London as they pulled off some of the most ambitious heists police had ever seen.

  They were eventually tagged as the Kangaroo Gang but their story was never fully explained until Melbourne journalist and author Adam Shand's book, King of Thieves: The Adventures of Arthur Delaney and the Kangaroo Gang (Allen & Unwin), was published in 2010.

  Shand followed the trail of the gang from Sydney and Melbourne all the way to England and Europe. He found former gang members, English associates and the police who chased the gang across the world and persuaded them to tell their stories for the first time. What emerged was a picture of a unique shoplifting gang that enjoyed a golden run before time, technology and their own bragging and big-noting caught up with them. While England focused on the spectacular armed heists like the 1963 Great Train Robbery, the Australians

• were operating below the radar, stealing millions of pounds worth of luxury goods without ever using violence or firear ms. It took years for the police to catch up with them.

  The Kangaroo Gang members were charismatic and fearless, veterans of shoplifting and other forms of crime back in Australia. Their targets were the plush emporia of Knightsbridge, such as Harrods, and the fine jewellers and boutiques of Mayfair. But they didn't stop there, regularly hopping across the Channel to plunder the finest stores of Paris, Brussels, Rome and beyond.

  The Kangaroo Gang operated at a time when shoplifting was considered a criminal craft, to be honed and perfected without resort to violence.

  The leader of the gang, 'The King' Arthur Delaney, had been a highly successful thief in Sydney. Working with one or two accomplices, Delaney was the scourge of retailers as he developed a unique method involving the distraction of staff to

• pull off his jobs. When Delaney got to London, he assembled much bigger teams and employed ever-more elaborate distractions to hit the best shops in town. The English had never seen anything like this before, despite a thriving criminal underworld.

  When word of The King's exploits reached Australia, every leading thief and pick-pocket started making the journey to London to try their luck. And with the gang needing female "headpullers" to distract staff, numerous women took the opportunity for an overseas "working holiday". At its peak in the late 60s, the Kangaroo Gang comprised more than 100 members, with new additions coming in each month.

  In The Kangaroo Gang: Thieves By Appointment, Shand has brought his book to life for television. Interviews with family members such as Arthur's daughters Peggy Darby and Rosina DaCosta, and policeman Brian Murphy shed light on the gang members early years in Australia. He also talks to Patty Burridge,

• a former convent schoolgirl who was swept up into Arthur's glamorous world and travelled to England where she became part of the gang's social set.

  Shand then returns to the UK to interview key players in this rollicking tale, taking with him one of the most successful members of the group, retired pick-pocket and jewel thief, 'Baby' Bruce Stanton.

  Reliving the heyday of the gang, 'Baby' Bruce describes the techniques and secrets that made them the most successful shoplifting gang the world has seen and reveals how corrupt senior commanders at Scotland Yard controlled the five pick-pocketing teams that operated in the London Underground, otherwise known as King Solomon's Mines.

  Shand tracked down former English fences and minders, including the 'Guvnor of Queensway', Dave 'Glasses' Barry, a legend in London criminal circles.

• A former associate of the infamous Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, 'Glasses' Barry was regarded as one of the best money getters in Britain when he began assisting the Australian arrivals in the early 1960s. Instrumental in getting the Kangaroo Gang started, Barry helped find them accommodation, lined up potential heists and introduced them to corrupt police who would help cover their tracks. Fondly remembering the good times of the 1960s, the nightly parties and celebrations, the trips to the Continent and the fabulous spoils the gang managed to steal, Barry explains how they looked after each other and how, with a little help from inside, they thwarted Scotland Yard's early efforts to put them out of business.

  But it couldn't last forever and by the late 60s police were striking back after the gang began hitting banks, brazenly stealing millions in travellers cheques and foreign exchange from right under the noses of security and staff. It was the beginning of the end.

Narrated by Barry Humphries, the dramatised documentary The Kangaroo Gang: Thieves by Appointment tells the true story of a brazen band of Aussie thieves who moved to London in the 1960s and ran riot for more than a decade, pulling off the most daring heists that Scotland Yard had ever seen.

Led by five charismatic master thieves: 'The King' Arthur Delaney, 'Wee Jimmy' Lloyd, Jack 'The Fibber' Warren, Billy 'The General' Hill and 'Gorgeous Georgie' Gardener, the team targeted the plush emporia of Knightsbridge, the fine jewellers of Mayfair, and the luxury retailers of Paris, Rome and beyond. Operating at a time before CCTV, they elevated shoplifting to an art form practised without guns or violence - and they always found a way to simply 'disappear' with the loot. In 1990, long after their heyday was over, one returned to London for the biggest heist of them all. Delaney had always dreamed of robbing the most famous jewellery store in London - Asprey of Bond St.

From the team behind successful series Tough Nuts: Australia's Hardest Criminals, this local production and world premiere is a mixture of high-end dramatised reconstructions, interviews and archive material based on the best-selling book: King of Thieves: The Adventures of Arthur Delaney and the Kangaroo Gang by Adam Shand. It is produced by The Full Box Productions for UKTV and BBC Worldwide Channels globally.

For nearly 30 years, 'The King' Arthur Delaney was the world's greatest travelling thief and the leader of the Kangaroo Gang. Once a truck driver in Newcastle north of Sydney, he turned himself into a modern-day Raffles criss-crossing the globe in a never-ending cycle of stealing, womanising and carousing. He pioneered the distraction method of shoplifting which was the key to the Kangaroo Gang's success around the world.