FRAMED!

CLEARED Colin Stagg has started spending his £700,000 compo windfall . . at discount store Matalan.

He went on a spree the day after netting his huge award and emerged with two giant framed prints worth £16.

They’ll smarten up the flat he’s buying from the council. Stagg has told pals he’ll use the cash handed out after his wrongful arrest and prosecution over the sex murder of ex-model Rachel Nickell, to fund the purchase.

And this could put him in line for another windfall. For having been the tenant of the flat, in Roehampton, south west London, for nearly 22 years he could buy it for as little as £150,000.

The property, close to leafy Richmond Park, could well fetch £250,000 if he sold it on.

That would give him £100,000 profit and push his bank balance towards the million-pound mark. The jobless loner has lived in the three-bedroom maisonette, with its pretty walled garden, since he was a child.

And when his father died in 1986 he took over the tenancy with Wandsworth Council. He told a pal: “It’s been my dream for years, but I never thought I would be able to afford it.

“I’ve kept the Right to Buy forms from council in a drawer for ages. This money means I can finally realise my dream.”

Stagg has told friends he plans use the proceeds of the flat sale—and his compensation fron the Home Office—to fund a lengthy trip around Europe.

But he’s still watching his pennies. After his visit to the Matalan shop in New Malden, Surrey, he called into a nearby Homebase DIY store for some tacks before heading home in his Toyota Rav 4.

Stagg, 45, was handed the huge sum last week, 16 years after Rachel, 23, was assaulted and stabbed front of her son Alex, then two, on Wimbledon Common, in 1992.

Robert Napper, 41, is to stand trial at the Old Bailey in November accused of the murder.