AMONG the celebrities, aristocrats and oligarchs dropping off their children at the gates of one of Britain’s most exclusive boarding schools, one parent stood out.
With a false eye, lurching limp and thick Cockney accent, former gangster Marvin Herbert has 21 convictions for 76 offences, including shootings and armed robberies.
, 53, has spent a total of 12 years behind bars, including being sentenced to five years after getting caught with a machine gun.
“I got arrested for lots, punished for lots, and got away with lots,” he recalls with a wry smile.
But the dad-of-four’s daughter Sloane, 17, was a model pupil at £58,000-a-year Millfield School in .
Other pupils there have included DJ Tony Blackburn, F1 driver , and bread boss Jonathan Warburton.
But Sloane, who is a keen netball and cricket player, grew up in a very different world.
She says: “One of my earliest memories is rooting around when I was left in the car for a few minutes, and pulling a gun out of the glove compartment.”
But put behind him. He turned to podcasting and motivational speaking to bankroll his share of Sloane’s education.
He also now runs a crime rehabilitation centre in to provide mental health support help to criminals get on the straight and narrow.
But growing up in , he got into crime very young — stealing car parts at the age of eight — before moving to London and falling in with notorious gang the Yardie Hit Squad.
Marvin has been stabbed more than 20 times and shot five times — once losing an eye, and another time a testicle.
He now has 16 pins in his right leg and eight facial scars — not your usual look among the silk-cravat crowd cheering on their darlings at Millfield cricket matches.
Marvin was called a “Premier League villain” by a Crown Court judge when jailed in 2003 over the machine gun. On his release, he scarpered to Spain and set up a business providing security for beach bars in millionaires’ playground Puerto Banus.
He recalls: “I went deep into the highest level of criminality, rubbed shoulders with the best and the worst.”
But there then came a terrifying brush with death, which made Marvin wake up to the error of his ways.
He got into a fight with a local man who was armed with a machine gun. It was over a stolen designer watch, and he was shot five times in the eye, crotch, arm and leg.
That run-in motivated him to turn his back on crime. He was distraught at the idea of his kids growing up without a dad, and says: “I’m glad he shot me, if I’m being honest, because I sort of predicted where my life would have ended up if I never got shot.”
He spent months in hospital recovering — but was arrested again in 2013 on suspicion of helping cop- killer Dale Cregan evade , although the case against Marvin was later dropped owing to a lack of evidence.
He finally returned to the UK in 2015 to build a new life in Camden, .
Sloane, meanwhile, moved in high society, making friends with the rich and famous — rather than infamous.
She says of boarding school: “I loved it. Friends have invited me to their homes in South Africa and Ghana, we had the Prince of Qatar’s cousin there, someone who is about 30th in line to the throne — and loads of super-rich Chinese and Russian kids who are head to foot in Gucci bling.
“Most of their dads have boring jobs in business or finance but my dad was a sought-after celebrity at school. Everyone knows him and wanted to hear his stories, and he loves retelling them.
“He’s covered in scars but the other fathers included him in everything — he was always invited for coffees, dinners and drinks — and the boys got really excited when they know Dad is coming into school, they thought he was cool.”
She cringed, though, when Marvin “pretends to be posh”.
He explains: “If I put on my posh voice it embarrasses her. I’m not allowed to speak posh so I’m just myself.”
Marvin attended Sloane’s netball and fixtures but borrows pals’ flash motors to arrive in style. Sloane says: “He turned up in a different car every time — Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, BMWs.”
But she adds: “The thing that winds me up is when people tell me he’s on Live. He can be a bit much on social media. But I love that my dad doesn’t care what other people think.”
Needless to say, Marvin also has strict rules when it comes to vetting his daughter’s potential boyfriends.
“They don’t touch her or kiss her until I’ve had a chat with them first,” he says — and Sloane’s most recent beau was dumped after he failed to turn up to dinner with Marvin when asked. “He was a bit overwhelmed,” says Sloane.
She insists she is no pushover herself, adding of her dad: “I’m more scary than him.”
But she added: “If people make me angry, I don’t hurt them, I hurt the things they love. I had this habit of hiding car keys and remote controls then calmly watching everyone lose their minds searching for them.”
Marvin is proud as punch of who she is becoming, though. Sloane says that after her schooling, she plans to study business and foreign languages — then ultimately “make money while I sleep”.
