UK TV station Channel 4, in marked contrast to its respectful older rival the BBC, has carved out quite a niche in debunking the Royal Family. It looks like it has produced another winner in The Gangster and the Princess, a film about the relationship between the Queen’s late sister and ne’re-do-well John Bindon.
Bindon, whose party turn was to thread five half-pint beer glasses (full, one trusts) on his ‘manhood’, allegedly enjoyed trysts (or romps as the tabs say these days) with Margaret on the island of Mustique in the Caribbean and at Kensington Palace (later the home of Princess Diana) in the 1970s.
At the time the Princess had split with her equally libidinous husband Lord Snowdon and was supposed to be involved in a relationship with society gardener Roddy Llewellyn (brother of ‘Dirty Dai’, the seducer of the valleys).
But Bindon’s more rugged charms (he hailed from Fulham, then a rather rougher area than it is now) clearly made a big impression.
Bindon and Margaret were allegedly photographed making love on the beach on one occasion and the photographs were part of the plot of the recent film The Bank Job.
This is about the true-life robbery of a branch of Lloyds Bank in Baker Street, London where the real intention wasn’t to nick the money (£500,000, worth about £5m today) but to get the photographs back.
Few people appear to be denying that Margaret and Bindon did indeed get it on, although ever-loyal diarist and biographer Kenneth Rose claims that Margaret, while she had affairs, would never have consorted with someone as vulgar as Bindon.
But could her other lovers, who allegedly included actors Warren Beatty and Peter Sellers, have managed the five half pint glasses trick?