A London bank robbery more than 35 years ago was staged by MI5 to recover compromising pictures of Princess Margaret on the Caribbean island of Mustique, a new film claims.
Clips of The Bank Job, which will be released next year, were shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Featuring the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels star Jason Statham, it tells the story of the 1971 Baker Street robbery, in which thieves tunnelled into the vault of a Lloyds bank and looted safe deposit boxes and jewellery worth the equivalent of £5m today. Nobody was ever arrested and none of the money recovered. The film alleges that a well-known criminal called Michael X had put the photographs of the Princess in the vault for safekeeping - and that was the point of the raid.
"What happened in the film is that the raid on Lloyds was set up by MI5," said the film's producer, Steven Chasman. "They knew a box with those pictures was inside the vaults."
The film's writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, interviewed about six people linked to the theft. Several said the photos, whose subject matter isn't known, were the real target. The Princess is not directly referred to, although the film's producers say it is "clear who we are talking about".
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Sound like a great "movie plot" to me...but who really knows if it is true.
They say that the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
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