The Princess, the gangster and a royal cover up...

THERE’S no denying that the title of this Channel 4 film has a definite allure: The Princess And The Gangster.

It has an even more salacious resonance when you realise we are talking about the House of Windsor, and a royal, who at one time, was second in line to the throne: Princess Margaret.

The second character in this allegedly steamy drama is one of London’s most violent criminals, John “Biffo” Bindon, who also appeared in several “landmark” gangster movies of the late Sixties and Seventies after being talent spotted by director Ken Loach.

Combine Princess Margaret and Bindon with the evocative Caribbean island of Mustique and you have the essential elements of a story worthy of the big screen, let alone a TV documentary.

According to the Channel 4 film, which doesn’t baulk at the smutty details: “Together, Bindon and Margaret would create one of the biggest hidden scandals in royal history, one that, if fully revealed at the time, could have rocked the monarchy to its foundations.”

The film begins in controversial fashion. One contributor, Noel Botham, the author of Margaret: The Last Real Princess, suggests: “He [Bindon] boasted to me that he had Margaret in Mustique, that she had given him the invitation to go to bed.”

The one-off documentary, which includes grainy sequences of drama-documentary “recreations”, provocatively shows a mystery figure setting fire to what would prove a controversial photograph of Bindon and the Princess together, taken on the Caribbean island, on one of his two visits there.

We are then transported to 1974, a time during which “the public couldn’t get enough of Princess Margaret”.

She was married to the “dashing and bohemian” Lord Snowdon but, it declares, “the dream royal marriage was a sham” with both having had affairs during the previous 10 years.

The public would know little about them due to the “loyalty” of the press.

But what are we to believe of this romance alluded to in the film?

Whether Princess Margaret had enjoyed a physical relationship with London gangster Bindon (supposedly the inspiration behind Vinnie Jones’s character in Guy Ritchie’s film Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) has been a matter of conjecture in society circles for years.

Baronet’s daughter Vicki Hodge, 62, who was Bindon’s on-off girlfriend for 13 years and features in the film, is adamant that the rough-hewn lad about town seduced the princess one night on the beach in Mustique, the Caribbean island where the rich and famous felt they could party in private.

Vicki, who met Bindon when he had turned to acting and appeared opposite Mick Jagger in the 1968 film Performance, was with Bindon and the princess on Mustique during his second trip there during the Seventies.

Now living in Barbados, she says that in the easygoing and sexually uninhibited Seventies “everyone thought nothing of making love on the beach”.

She believes the Princess was instantly attracted to Fulham-born Bindon whom she describes as “tall, broad, with an air of menace, coupled with a boyish charisma that rendered him irresistible”.

He made no secret of his rough past – by the age of 16 he was in borstal and he served two years in Maidstone Prison for attacking a man with a bottle.

He would also later be tried for murder in a separate case.

She adds: “When I saw them together, they were magnetised to each other, they were obviously involved. You could tell it in their body language. The fact that I was his girlfriend didn’t really matter. It was, ‘Step aside, baby.’ Then there were calls from Kensington Palace and I began to realise there was a very clandestine relationship going on.

“When he was drunk, he began to talk about it – where, when, how and what colour underwear she was wearing. He was a very physical man and she was a very physical woman and if they wanted a relationship, it was their choice.”

Vicki, a lively blonde who went on to enjoy affairs with Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr and Yul Brynner – and once claimed to have slept with Prince Andrew when his ship docked in Barbados when he was in the Navy – suspects that Bindon and his royal lover may even have been photographed while they were making love on the beach.

She says: “I think that could have been their one dangerous moment.”

Indeed a film released last year, The Bank Job, suggested the compromising pictures were at the centre of a bank robbery carried out in London during the early Seventies which was set up by the Secret Services to retrieve them.

According to Vicki, Princess Margaret was beguiled by Bindon’s primary “asset”.

There was much talk on Mustique about Bindon’s manhood, a sight so spectacular that his party trick was to display it with five half-pint beer mugs dangling from it.

The Princess is said to have asked for a “private view” of Bindon’s appendage after lunch one day on the island.

Her friend and court jester, Lord Glenconner, turned to Bindon and said: “Ma’am knows of your advantage in life and would like to see it.”

The two then disappeared for an hour, with Bindon later claiming he had seduced her.

One associate tells the film: “This man needed at least two or three women a day and he got them.”

Other close friends of the Princess have always maintained she never had an intimate relationship with Bindon.

One former lady-in-waiting, who was with Margaret during both of Bindon’s visits to Mustique said: “She was certainly intrigued and amused by him, but there is absolutely no way they slept together. He was way too rough for her – she liked a particular type, a more delicate sort of man – like Roddy Llewellyn and Tony Snowdon – and she wasn’t about to sully her reputation by trying a bit of rough. She heard about Bindon’s boasts concerning her and was very annoyed about it.”

Dana Gillespie, an upper-class girl turned actress and singer, who attended the first lunch with Bindon and Margaret on Mustique, tells the film-makers: “He was taken with her from the start. She was the Queen’s sister and there was a certain amount of magnetism about her.

“He was funny. He could take over. Even she could be taken aback by him. He could tell very risqué jokes and she enjoyed a laugh. It must have been a relief to hear someone telling rude, caustic jokes because no one back in England was going to tell jokes like that. He was a real man.”

During this lunch, the now famous photograph of Bindon and Margaret together was taken. A T-shirt worn by the gangster was emblazoned with the words “Enjoy Cocaine”.

This is the not the first time Channel 4 has tackled the subject of Princess Margaret.

Several years ago, it broadcast a controversial biopic of the party-going royal, but a TV insider told me: “We never even thought of including the story of Bindon. It just never entered our minds. But Margaret definitely had a reputation, and plenty went on in Mustique – much of it of a debauched nature – that was never publicised.”

Did she behave badly on Mustique? Says royal correspondent James Whitaker: “She did have liaisons with men, and she could have got away with murder because, honestly, no one on the island was ever going to tell on her.”

Dana Gillespie concludes: “He made her laugh, but I don’t think he did the biz with her.”

The Princess And The Gangster, C4, tomorrow, 9pm.