Harvey Holford was one of the most flamboyant characters in Brighton during the early 1960s.

Saturnine, bearded and immaculately dressed, Holford owned the Whisky-A-Go-Go coffee bar, the Calypso Club and the Blue Gardenia Club.

They were all in the same building at Queen Square opposite the Clock Tower.

Holford was often seen driving a large red limousine, open-topped in fine weather. He usually had a motor boat trailing behind.

Friend to the famous, rich and successful, Holford seemed to lead an enviable life.

But his world came crashing down half a century ago when Holford, then 34, was jailed for killing his 21-year-old wife, Christine.

Holford and Christine had married in 1960 at Dorset Gardens Methodist Church after defeating legal opposition from her father, Richard Hughes, a caterer, who felt Holford was not good enough for her.

But Christine was unfaithful to Holford and her lovers included John Bloom, the washing machine tycoon, celebrated then but forgotten now.

Holford went to France in August 1962 to find Christine, who had stayed with Bloom in Nice. Insanely jealous, he cut off her hair in an attack when they were back in Brighton.

The couple were reconciled briefly but when Christine told him their daughter, Karen, was not his, something snapped in Holford.

He shot her several times, killing her. Then he swallowed scores of tablets and lay cuddling her, waiting to die.

But he survived after being unconscious for more than three days, thanks to prompt action by the police and doctors.

Holford was accused of murder. He was remanded in custody in Lewes Prison and committed for trial at Sussex Assizes.

But on the day before the trial, he fell from a first-floor landing and fractured his skull. Once more he recovered.

The trial started eventually in March 1963. The all-male jury cleared Holford of murder and returned a verdict of manslaughter through provocation and diminished responsibility.

At a time when the death sentence was still passed in many murder trials, Holford was sentenced to just three years and was paroled after 18 months.

He changed his name to Robert Keith Beaumont and ran an estate agent’s business in Ditchling Road.

Holford posed a dilemma for The Argus and other papers when he stood in the February 1974 general election as an independent for Brighton Pavilion.

Should we mention his past? At first we decided not to as he had served his sentence.

But when Holford’s manifesto included the death penalty for people who murdered children, his previous life could not be ignored.

Holford polled 428 votes but in the October 1974 contest gained only 155 as the English National Party candidate for Brighton Kemptown.

By this time, he had started the Maria Colwell Memorial Fund, named after the seven-year-old Brighton girl beaten to death by her stepfather in 1973.

I often saw Holford, looking powerful and brooding, in Brighton but he took no further part in public life.

In 2006, he died of leukaemia aged 77. Few of the many friends and acquaintances he made in the 1960s were there to mourn the death of a sad and troubled man.