FOUND: Radio Ham's sensational tape of the bank heist 'that rescued compromising pictures'

With its heady mix of gangsters, Royal glamour, MI5 intrigue and comedy cops and robbers, it's no surprise that the producers of new British film The Bank Job are expecting it to do great things at the box office.

Amateur Radio features in the new film 'The Bank Job'

But what many of those who go to see the movie may not immediately realise is that much of its improbable plot is rooted in fact.

The film recounts the riveting story of one of Britain's most infamous crimes: the Walkie Talkie Robbery of 1971.

Starring Jason Statham as the main robber and Saffron Burrows as his East End model girlfriend, the movie makes the scandalous claim that the secret services authorised a raid on a branch of Lloyds Bank in London's Baker Street to retrieve compromising pictures of Princess Margaret left in a safe deposit box there.

The £500,000 heist - equivalent to £5million today - would not have caught the nation's imagination, let alone made the cinema, were it not for the key role of amateur radio ham Robert Rowlands.

Mr Rowlands stumbled across radio conversations between the thieves tunnelling into the bank vault and their rooftop lookout. The police listened in as the robbery happened, then started a farcical and futile search for the criminals.

Now, after more than three decades, The Mail on Sunday has tracked down Mr Rowlands, 72, to Calpe, on Spain's Costa Blanca, where he retired seven years ago.

He agreed to dust off the extraordinary tape, left to languish in his desk drawer, and reveal in full, for the first time, what happened in 1971

Read the full Daily Mail article here

The Bank Job website
http://www.bankjobmovie.co.uk/

Our thanks to Ian G3ZHI for spotting this article