Toffs & Crims

A new season of four programmes, Toffs and Crims , explores the affinity between the upper echelons of society and the criminal underclass. The season starts with The Princess and the Gangster , focussing on Princess Margaret’s association with one of London’s most notorious and violent criminals, John Bindon. A chance meeting in Mustique started a chain of events that included rumours of compromising photographs, secret meetings at Kensington Palace and a High Court murder trial.

The second documentary in the Toffs and Crims series, which explores the affinity between the upper echelons of society and the criminal underclass, looks at how political influence was at the heart of the notorious Kray twins’ success. They rose from small-time racketeers to become the most powerful criminal organisation that London had ever seen, and The Gangster and the Pervert Peer unpicks how they built their empire. For a while fear, violence and extortion played a major part; another secret to their success was a relationship with a prominent Tory peer.

The third documentary in the Toffs and Crims series tells the story of the Mayfair casino king and one of Britain’s most successful gambling cons. According to new claims, over the course of two years in the 1960s the multi-millionaire John Aspinall orchestrated a scam where he cheated his clientele of millions in his own casino. Aspinall’s family and friends deny that he was ever involved in any criminal activity at the club. This film mixes the first-hand testimony of the surviving members of this world with dramatic reconstruction to tell the story of the Clermont Club and the con that was run there.

The final film in Channel 4’s Toffs and Crims series. It Girls Lady Victoria and Lady Isabella come under the spotlight today, and in the 90s it was their troubled half-brother John. But it can be argued that their father, Victor, was the most notorious Hervey of them all. Victor was expelled from Eton and kicked out of Sandhurst. A shameless self-publicist and fantasist, he was desperate to outshine his notorious relatives and soon cast himself in a new role, that of criminal mastermind extraordinaire. To this day the true extent of Victor’s criminal dealings will never be known.