Cheeky John Bindon’s T-shirt reveals his fondness for cocaine, captured alongside Princess Margaret in a typical holiday snapshot on Mustique.
Indeed, his preferences extended to cocaine…and heroin as well.
During the sexually liberating Seventies, Mustique emerged as a private island where the affluent and famous could indulge in their desires at will.
In an era where capturing clandestine photos with a phone was impossible, and before the digital revolution, any reporting photographer caught lurking would have their camera film forcibly confiscated.
As an owned island, it was populated with ‘special agents’ ensuring that visitors remained largely concealed from the outside world.
While not exactly common, couples on the beach ‘making out’ typically went unnoticed.
You might recall that the most renowned couple to embrace on this beach were the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and John Bindon, a London gangster turned actor, who supposedly inspired Vinnie Jones’s character in Guy Ritchie’s film Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
For years, speculation has surrounded Princess Margaret’s affair with Bindon.
A British film, The Bank Job, stirred fresh theories suggesting sexually compromising images of her were secretly captured in Mustique.
The film implies that the Princess’s compromising photographs taken on the island were pivotal in a London bank heist during the early Seventies.
It asserts that the £500,000 theft—equivalent to £5 million today—at Lloyds Bank on Baker Street aimed to secure these images.
The incident was dubbed the “walkie-talkie bank job” after a bystander overheard the robbers communicating via a two-way radio.
This vivid portrayal of Princess Margaret was captured in 1949 when she was just nineteen.
However, a mysterious ‘government gagging order’ subsequently halted further coverage of the heist.
Stunning model Vicki Hodge, the daughter of baronet Sir John Hodge and sibling
of Wendy Kidd, was John Bindon’s long-term lover. She accompanied Bindon and Princess Margaret on his second trip to Mustique in the Seventies.
Vicki firmly believes that Bindon and the Princess indeed had a sexual encounter, possibly captured in secret photographs.
“John shared with me that he had sex with Princess Margaret during his first visit to Mustique,” Vicki recounted from her home in Barbados.
“He frequently spoke of his liaisons but never divulged the specifics.
“Back then in Mustique, it was commonplace for people to make love on the beach without a second thought.
“It’s entirely possible that Margaret and John’s fleeting moment was on the beach, and someone may have snapped a picture.”
Princess Margaret’s romance with Mustique began in 1960, following the island’s purchase by Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner, in 1958 for £45,000. He gifted her ten acres of land as a wedding present.
She had a dwelling constructed, naming it Les Jolies Eaux, which translates to “beautiful waters.” It became her beloved sanctuary away from London life.
By the early Seventies, as her marriage to Lord Snowdon faced difficulties, she sought refuge on the island with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener seventeen years her junior.
The lavish parties hosted on Mustique, home to Margaret’s photographer cousin, Lord Lichfield, created a legendary atmosphere.of legend.
One narrative suggests that Llewellyn, Colin Tennant, and his friend Nicholas Courtney all bared their bodies on the beach to be captured in photographs by Margaret.
It remains ambiguous whether she permitted suggestive pictures to be taken of herself.
Vicki Hodge, a tall blonde with a sparkling smile, whose romantic history involved Rod Stewart, Yul Brynner, Ringo Starr, and Margaret’s nephew Prince Andrew, may have felt envy over her gangster boyfriend’s romantic involvement with the Princess, although she was not at all astonished by it.
“John had a tall, broad physique, emanating an air of menace combined with a boyish charm that made him utterly irresistible.
“The Princess adored his cockney accent, his rhyming slang, and his risqué humor,” she recounted.
Vicki also stated that Margaret – who had previously enjoyed liaisons with actors Warren Beatty and Peter Sellers – was entranced by Bindon’s prominent “asset.”
One afternoon in Mustique, while a butler served lobster and notable guests indulged in champagne and caviar, the Princess, holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other, exchanged off-color jokes with Bindon.
Then, as per Vicki, Lord Glenconner made a surprising proposition.
“He turned to John and said, ‘Ma’am is aware of your advantage in life and would be quite interested to see it.’ ”
Tennant, of course, was alluding to Bindon’s manhood – a sight so extraordinary that he habitually showcased it, with five half-pint beer mugs hanging from it.
One of his antics involved swinging it around while pretending it was a helicopter.
So, after the extraordinary request, he didn’t hesitate. “He leaped up,” Vicki recalls, “and, with Princess Margaret and her lady-in-waiting following, strolled along the beach.
“Then he unveiled his appendage. The Princess scrutinized it much like one would examine a fossil. We all gasped.”
Vicki recognized she was witnessing a performance that the Princess was staging for both her own and John’s enjoyment.
She had likely already encountered Bindon’s much-discussed asset.
Those familiar with Margaret would agree she had a penchant for danger.
However, nothing within her privileged existence had equipped her for the risks that John Bindon posed.
Born to a rough, working-class family in Fulham, West London, Bindon suffered beatings from his abusive father and found himself in Borstal by the age of 16.
Subsequently, he spent two years in Maidstone Prison for assaulting a man with a bottle.
During his time there, Bindon became acquainted with Frank “Mad Axeman” Mitchell, a cohort of the infamous Kray Twins, who ruled the London underworld.
As Bindon’s career as an enforcer in the underworld began to rise, his rugged good looks opened yet another, distinctly different avenue.
Director Ken Loach saw John in a pub in Fulham and cast him in his landmark film Poor Cow; he subsequently took on minor roles in various films.
He typically portrayed thugs, acting in classic films such as Get Carter with Michael Caine, Performance featuring Mick Jagger, and Barry Lyndon alongside Ryan O’Neal.
It was during the filming of Performance that he crossed paths with Vicki Hodge, the beautiful, rebellious daughter of a baronet.
“The attraction was immediate. It was very much in character for me – always the rebel and adventuress – to fall for the most dangerous man in London, a stark contrast to my background,” she expressed.
Captivated by him, she managed to ignore the shocking truths of his character and the violence he inflicted.
Once, he brutally severed a man’s arm with a machete and eventually directed his aggression at Vicki during conflicts, especially when he lost his temper.
Bindonalso had a particularly vicious fight with gangster Ginger Chowles.
Vince, Ginger’s son, recounts, “My Dad was drunk and having a go at Bindon.
“Then Bindon ran over and kicked him so hard that my dad fell down the stairs and broke his arm.
“Bindon jumped on top of him and continued hitting him.
“Eventually, a showgirl named Suzie broke them up. Bindon walked away almost unscathed.”
On another occasion, an enraged Bindon accidentally laid into a pub manager, resulting in a broken jaw.
In line with Bindon’s usual reasoning, they had a “little misunderstanding.”
Afterwards, the pub manager remarked that he had never been hit so hard in his life.
This was the man who was introduced to Princess Margaret. The wayward Princess found him instantly fascinating.
And if anything was to develop between them, Mustique was the ideal backdrop. Nude sunbathing was the norm, and at lunchtime, cars would bring silver, fine china, an array of delicacies, and champagne, all set out on the beach by maids and butlers.
Then the party would keep going. “No one really worried about security,” Vicki explained, “so MI5 would observe from the top of a cliff, avoiding crowding the Princess.
“John became somewhat of a court jester for the Princess, sharing jokes, pouring her champagne, catering to her every need, and she adored it.”
For three weeks, Bindon soaked up Princess Margaret’s admiration on Mustique.
Smitten by him, she carried on the liaison back in London.
“There would be calls at our flat in Fulham, summoning John to Kensington Palace.
“He would change into a fresh shirt, press his trousers, and then a car would pick him up.”
Vicki claims that the Princess and the gangster even went out together in public. “They’d never arrive at a location together, but I spotted them at Gasworks, a restaurant featuring a chess set with pieces designed as couples in various sexual positions.
“John and the Princess were always laughing together, and it was obvious she was entertained by him.”
However, all the laughter ceased when Bindon was arrested for stabbing a fellow gangster, Johnny Darke, to death at a London pub.
He stood trial for murder at the Old Bailey in 1979, but after actor Bob Hoskins testified as a character witness, he was acquitted.
By then, Princess Margaret had moved on from Bindon, but his arrest and trial must have confirmed for her the extreme foolishness of ever being involved with him.
Instead, she continued her romance with the much younger Llewellyn until he discarded her for his current wife, Tania. Princess Margaret passed away in 2002 at the age of 71.
Ultimately, Colin Tennant was forced to sell Mustique. While Patrick Lichfield, Mick Jagger, and Tommy Hilfiger still owned residences there, Princess Margaret’s son, David Linley, sold her house, Les Jolies Eaux, while she was still alive, which reportedly upset her deeply.
As for John Bindon, his film career crumbled following the trial, and Vicki Hodge recalls that he resorted to selling himself for sex.
In 1993, he succumbed to AIDS.
Vicki, the blonde drawn to the darker aspects of life, relocated to Barbados and married a local businessman.
She continues to live in the Caribbean, not far from Mustique, with memories of Princess Margaret, her lover John Bindon, and a world of decadence that has long since faded away.
Yet perhaps, somewhere out there, lurk salacious photographs that immortalize the moment a princess fell for a gangster.
by Sasha Dubronitz
