JOHN BINDON, who has died aged 50, was one of the most flamboyant London villains of his day and turned his "tough-guy" persona to legitimate account as an actor in such television programmes as Hazell, The Sweeney and Softly Softly.
Possessed of a menacing physique and considerable charm, Bindon was a gregarious self-publicist who counted among his friends the Kray twins and Princess Margaret. 
Acquaintances were often frightened of him, but recall him as "screamingly funny". When the Earl of Longford was engaged in his celebrated investigation into pornography, Bindon "flashed" at him outside the Chelsea Potter pub. He was justly famed for a party trick which entailed the balancing of as many as six half-pint mugs on one part his anatomy.
He served several prison sentences, and in 1979 was accused of murdering an underworld enforcer in a club brawl. A taxi driver's son, John Bindon was born in Fulham, London, in October 1943. He recalled his infancy as miserable (his mother used to keep him under the kitchen table) and said: "I've had this overwhelming urge to smash things up ever since I was a kid."
At the age of 11, he was charged with malicious damage. A few years later he was sent to Borstal for possession of live ammunition. Bindon made a living from such jobs as plucking pheasants and laying asphalt, before progressing to the antiques trade.
He was holding court one night in a London pub when Ken Loach, then filming Poor Cow, Nell Dunn's gritty story of working-class life, walked in. Noted for his use of amateurs, Loach thought Bindon "absolutely right" for the film. "The only thing out of character" said Bindon of his role, "is that I have to hit Carol White in one scene - and I never hit women."
The success of the film launched him on an acting career in which he played criminals. He held his own alongside Mick Jagger and James Fox in Performance (1973), and was a drug dealer in Quadrophenia (1979).
Bindon had no regrets about being typecast, although he expressed a wistful desire "to play a priest sometime".
In 1968 he met Vicki Hodge, a baronet's daughter turned model, who introduced him to polite society. She invited him to Mustique, where Bindon claimed to have charmed Princess Margaret with his rough humour and Cockney rhyming slang.
The Princess denied meeting Bindon and was reportedly shocked to hear stories of their dancing together. His name was linked with a succession of women, including Christine Keeler, the former "Bunny Girl" Serena Williams and Angie Bowie, the wife of the pop star.
In the early 1970s Bindon dominated many Chelsea and Fulham pubs, where he was rumoured to run protection rackets. He could be gallant, but a close relationship was precarious. On one occasion a young man who offended him was reputedly driven in a car boot to Putney Common where Bindon made him dig his own grave before relenting. His innate anger was apparently only checked by the liberal consumption of cannabis.
Despite his substantial earnings - not entirely from acting - he was constantly in financial difficulties, and by 1976 he was bankrupt.
Two years later Bindon killed a gangster named John Darke during a struggle outside a pub in Putney. Badly wounded, he fled to Dublin, but returned to England for his trial, where the prosecution alleged he had been paid £10,000 for the killing.
The jury acquitted him after hearing that Bindon had gone to the aid of a man who had been knifed in the face by Darke. The actor Bob Hoskins appeared as a character witness: "When Bob walked in," Bindon recalled, "the jury knew I was OK."
His reputation as an essentially decent man had been enhanced when he was given the Queen's Award for Bravery in 1968, for diving into the Thames in a vain attempt to rescue a drowning man - although Bindon allegedly boasted that he had been fighting with the man on Putney Bridge, had pushed him in and had dived in to save him only when he saw a policeman approaching.
In 1981 Bindon began a new career as a director of a company manufacturing hand-made shoes, but his impetuous personality continued to land him in trouble.
In 1982 he pleaded guilty to using a section of pavement as an offensive weapon against a "short and weedy" young man who had bumped into Bindon as he was celebrating his birthday.
In 1983 he was again declared bankrupt. A year later he appealed successfully against a conviction for threatening an off-duty policeman with a carving knife: "Now I won't have to play five-a-side football with George Best," he said.
In 1985 he was cleared of causing criminal damage to a restaurant in Earl's Court. Two years later he was charged with possessing an offensive weapon, and soon afterwards cleared of threatening to petrol-bomb the home of a mother of three.
His final days were spent in some privation and loneliness in the tiny Belgravia flat he had purchased in more prosperous times.