A serial trickster who pretended to be a barrister so he could enjoy a free stay in a luxury hotel was last night jailed for two years.

Paul Bint, known as "King Con", had a habit of impersonating the rich, famous and talented, which has seen him locked up in prisons and mental institutions during the last decade.

In the latest incident he was put up in a top hotel for three nights after telling train staff that his laptop computer, which contained crucial case details, had been stolen while he was travelling from Birmingham to Glasgow, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

The former hairdresser alerted staff on the Virgin service, and the train was stopped while a search was carried out.

The delay took so long that the remaining passengers on board were taken to Glasgow by taxi while Bint was put up for three nights in Edinburgh at a cost of £545.

Bint, of no fixed address, had also admitted stealing barristers' robes and a wig from Birmingham Crown Court.

He also admitted making off without payment from a restaurant, and attempting to obtain a free taxi ride from Berwick-upon-Tweed, North-umberland, to Newcastle while posing as a doctor.

The court heard how he had become infamous for his lies and con tricks.

A judge once told him: ''You have an unfortunate talent which you have used over and over again to persuade others that your fantasy world exists."

The former hairdresser's favourite scam involved posing as a locum doctor and touring the wards of various hospitals.

One time he whispered "Trust me I'm a doctor" to a woman as he slipped his hand inside her bra.

He was first caught in 1983, but only after he had arranged x-rays, attended a man who had a collapsed lung, put 12 stitches in another man's head wound, and tried to bluff his way into a heart by-pass operation.

That year he was ordered to be kept indefinitely at a psychiatric hospital in York, after Nottingham Crown Court heard he had bluffed his way into St James's Hospital in Leeds, commonly known as Jimmy's, posing as a doctor.

He was once arrested on the M1 in a Mercedes which he had taken for a test drive, claiming that he was the Duke of Arundel.

He was released from the psychiatric hospital in April 1994, but in October that year he was jailed for five years for theft and burglary, also linked to incidents while posing as a doctor.

He conned his way in to Royal Preston Hospital and Blackburn Royal Infirmary posing again as a locum doctor.

He was arrested after a woman called police because Bint, posing as Dr Pearce Hanson, had given her mother sleeping pills which knocked her out for 12 hours.

He had also asked to feel her mother's breasts for lumps, saying: ''Trust me, I'm a doctor".

Bint posed as an aristocrat, and once claimed to be a dancer with the Royal Festival Ballet.

In 1983 he gatecrashed a party held by Viscount Linley, and he also tried to introduce himself to Koo Stark by sending a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne to her table.

In 1988, he was sentenced to four years in jail for tricking a salesman out of an £83,000 Ferrari while posing as the Earl of Arundel.

He also once took a Golf GTi cabriolet while pretending to be a relative of the then Lord Chancellor.

Posing as Piers Oppenheimer, he test drove a Porsche and disappeared with it. He also once posed as Lord Forte's grandson to do the same with a Rolls-Royce