In his heyday, brewery heir Simon Mann rubbed shoulders with dukes as a member of the exclusive Mayfair club, White's.

This morning, the buccaneering former SAS captain was due to shuffle out of his 12ft by 5ft maximum security cell in Zimbabwe's notorious Chikurubi jail, shackled hand and foot and dressed in lice-infested clothes, for trial on firearms and public order charges.

The 51-year-old faces five years in prison if convicted. More frighteningly, he could be extradited to Equatorial Guinea where a court could impose the death penalty.

It is all a far cry from Simon Mann's privileged upbringing. Born the son of a former England cricket captain who made a fortune from the Watney brewing empire, Mr Mann attended Eton. After school he joined the Scots Guards, one of Britain's smartest regiments, and did officer training at Sandhurst.

When the regular Army failed to challenge him enough, Mr Mann underwent the gruelling tests to join the SAS and passed first time. He served as a captain in Cyprus, Germany, Norway, Canada, Central America and Northern Ireland.

At the age of 28 he left the Army, in search of wider horizons and better pay. He sold hacker-proof computer software. He set up a company providing guards for Arab billionaires on their British estates.

Soldiering continued to call him, however. In 1990 he was briefly tempted back into uniform as an aide to Sir Peter de la Billiere, the head of the British forces during the first Gulf War.

Then in 1992 Mr Mann took his first serious step into the world of mercenaries. He and Tony Buckingham, an entrepreneur, set up the company Executive Outcomes, and made millions supplying soldiers and guards for Western oil installations during Angola's savage civil war.

In 1995, Mr Mann and another former Scots Guard, Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer, set up an offshoot company called Sandline, which became notorious for shipping arms to Sierra Leone in breach of a UN embargo - although they insisted that this was with the knowledge and approval of the British Government.

In 1997 Mann at last seemed ready to hang up his boots. He and his third wife, Amanda, bought a house in South Africa in the exclusive Cape Town suburb of Constantia. They fished, bought art and entertained. They enjoyed Christmas dinner with Mark Thatcher, a near neighbour, and his mother, the former Prime Minister.

Friends and relatives who assumed that Mr Mann had retired were astonished when, on March 7, he was arrested at Harare airport.

He had gone to meet 66 South African former soldiers and three crew who had just landed in a Boeing 727 owned by Mr Mann's company, Logo Logistics.

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