SELF-STYLED international playboy Raymond Scott had abandoned his appeal against conviction for handling a priceless stolen Shakespeare volume, it emerged last night.

The flamboyant 55-year-old was found dead in his cell at Acklington Prison, in Northumberland, on Wednesday morning – only days before he was due to take his case to the Court of Appeal.

However, had Tuesday’s London hearing gone ahead, Scott’s lawyers would have only challenged his sentence – asking for his eight-year jail term to be cut – not his convictions for handling and transporting Durham University’s stolen Shakespeare First Folio.

Last night, Clive McKeag, Scott’s solicitor, said: “We gave him certain advice and he accepted that advice. We certainly had no forewarning of this (his death) at all.”

Mr McKeag, a former Newcastle United director, said he was saddened by Scott’s death, which he called distressing and upsetting.

He said: “It came as a complete surprise and it is very sad.

“It is always upsetting when someone dies in these circumstances, but we do not yet know anything about the circumstances of his death.

“He was convinced of various things and nothing would deter him from his beliefs. He appeared to get on well with people.”

An inquest will take place, and there will also be an investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.

However, police said no one else was thought to have been involved in his death.

At his trial, Scott, previously of Wingate, County Durham, was accused of stealing the 1623-printed First Folio, said to be the most important printed work in the English language, in December 1998.

The priceless work reappeared when Scott produced it at the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington DC, US, in June 2008, saying he had acquired it in Cuba.

Over the following months, Scott, who never worked, but ran up huge credit card debts swigging champagne and driving a Ferrari, appeared at court as a range of characters, including Bonnie Prince Charlie and Che Guevara.

He was cleared of theft, but convicted of handling stolen goods and removing them from the UK.