The Queen's Lost Uncle (C4): AS if the present royals didn't have enough problems, C4 opens the cupboard to let another skeleton come tumbling out.

This time it's the current Queen's "controversial uncle", Prince George, the Duke of Kent.

He was "the royal bad boy" of the 1920s and 1930s, who partied hard, took drugs, had casual sex with both sexes, and eventually married a fairy tale princess and had three children.

Quite enough to be going on with, you might reasonably think. But there's more. He was killed in 1942 when the aircraft in which he was travelling on a secret wartime mission ploughed into a Scottish hillside and exploded.

The cause of the crash remains a mystery as the files have been "sifted" and, to this day, all George's papers remain under lock and key (which sounds a lot safer than leaving them with your trusted butler).

George was one of the four sons of George V and Queen Mary. The sad story of Prince John was related in Stephen Poliakoff's film The Lost Prince earlier this year. The other brothers were the Queen's father, King George VI, and Edward VIII.

In many ways, this documentary suggested, George was the most gifted of the four brothers. He liked music and once entered a tango competition under an assumed name - and won. He was a sensitive lad whose parents showed him little love. His father, in particular, didn't appreciate his artistic ways and made him join the navy despite the fact he suffered from chronic seasickness.

He preferred partying with the high society folk of the roaring twenties. He and Edward were often seen out on the town, getting drunk and on one occasion, it was claimed, out in public in drag.

There were love affairs with both sexes, including a passionate affair with Noel Coward. Not for nothing did the soundtrack feature the performer's song Mad About The Boy at this point.

The promiscuous bi-sexual prince left a trail of compromising evidence in his wake. These letters revealing his drug taking, drinking and extreme behaviour would have been a gift for today's tabloids.

The problem was that, like a lot of royals, he was at a loose end. There was an heir and a spare, so he had no role. When he became a morphine addict, Edward packed him off to a house in the country to undergo a painful programme of rehabilitation. George attempted suicide.

He left the navy but a career in the arts was out of the question. He was made a Home Office factory inspector, hardly a suitable job for a glamorous young man about town.

Eventually, he did settle down. Marriage and three children domesticated him. He went back into uniform during the Second World War, acting as bait in a top secret plan to fool the Nazis.

Whether this had any bearing on the plane crash in which he died we don't know, but it's all very suspicious.

The Queen's Lost Uncle was every bit as fascinating as The Lost Prince with its tale of sex, scandal and backstabbing among the royals. Nothing much has changed really.

Published: 07/11/2003