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Princess in sex shocker
19/08/2005 10:19 - (SA)
London - A British television channel said on Thursday it plans to screen what it calls a "factually accurate" television drama that depicts Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister, Princess Margaret, having sex and taking drugs.
Channel 4 described The Queen's Sister as "a witty and irreverent royal romp." One scene features the princess in a lesbian kiss, while another shows her smoking a "strange cigarette" at a party, the channel said.
"I think some people will find it quite arresting and challenging," said Channel 4's director of television, Kevin Lygo. "It's factually accurate and it's a racy romp."
Arts-loving Margaret, who died in February 2002 aged 71, added a dash of cosmopolitan glamour to the royal family's staid image.
Her life was overshadowed by her youthful romance with Royal Air Force Group Captain Peter Townsend, a dashing - but divorced - hero of the Battle of Britain. At the time, it was considered unthinkable that the queen's sister should marry a divorced man, and in 1955 Margaret announced she would not wed Townsend.
Margaret went on to marry the Earl of Snowdon, but the couple divorced in 1978, making Margaret the first divorcee in the queen's immediate family.
Lygo said the drama captured Margaret "in the late fifties and early sixties when she was absolutely the most glamorous public female figure in a Diana-like way in her own era and then it all went a bit wrong."
Francis Hopkinson, Channel 4's senior commissioning editor for drama, said the programme "shows the excesses of hedonism" but "wasn't intended as an expose."
He said it was based on interviews and research from existing sources.
Channel 4 said it planned to broadcast the programme in late November.
- AP
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South Africa
