Daredevil Evel Knievel, who dodged death in spectacular motorcycle leaps and crashes in a life full of showmanship, died on Friday aged 69, according to his lawyer and a message on his Website.

"I just spoke with him last night. He seemed to be in good spirits," said Knievel's lawyer, Richard Fee, adding that he died in the Tampa Bay area of Florida that he recently made his home.

The front page of the tempestuous showman's official Website - www.evelknievel.com - read simply "Robert Craig 'Evel' Knievel October 17, 1938 - November 30, 2007." The site quickly became inaccessible as it presumably was deluged by hits.

"Anybody can jump a motorcycle," he once told Esquire magazine. "The trouble begins when you try to land it."

Knievel - who retired in 1981 after breaking more than 40 bones in his body, including his back, seven times - had been ill for some time, suffering from a lung disease.

He recently gave what he said "may be the last interview I ever do" to the December issue of Maxim magazine, and battled rap singer Kanye West for infringing his trademark in the Touch the Sky video, in which West appears as "Evel Kanyevel" and wears a white jumpsuit like the one Knievel made famous.

The two reached a settlement last Tuesday.

In his heyday, the king of all daredevils dressed like a superhero in a red, white and blue leather jumpsuit with a cape and cane, his hair sculpted back in a tall pompadour.

Knievel's greatest stunt turned out to be a failure when on September 8, 1974, he tried to ride a rocket-powered motorcycle across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho.

With a pay-per-view television audience watching, the parachute deployed when his Skycycle X-2 was only two-thirds across, sending the cycle into the canyon wall.

It landed partly in the river but Knievel walked away with minor injuries.

For a jump over 13 double-decker buses in London's Wembley Stadium in 1975, he was paid $1 million, a fortune at the time, according to Maxim.