Baker Street Robbery - in Popular Media

In Popular Media

A semi-fictional version of the robbery is the subject of the 2008 film The Bank Job, which explores another popular theory of the crime that argues the robbery was either set up by, or later covered up by, MI5 to secure sexually compromising photographs of Princess Margaret which were being kept in a deposit box at the bank by known radical Michael X. While this theory has usually been considered yet another urban myth, there have been some individuals, including George McIndoe, an advisor to the film who claimed to have knowledge of the actual robbery, purporting that this was indeed the real motivation for the robbery.

There are also some similarities between the robbery and Troy Kennedy Martin's 1975 episode Night Out for the first series of The Sweeney. The story sees Inspector Jack Regan holed up in a pub over Saturday night and Sunday morning waiting for a gang of villains who have broken through from the pub basement to the safety-deposit vault of the bank next door. Meanwhile the police are listening in to radio traffic between the robbers in the vault and the gang's spotter on the pub roof. Money is not the primary objective of the robbers. Instead they are after—and the Crime Squad want to capture them with—a mysterious envelope tied with seals and red tape that the gang's leader secures with a flourish at the climax of act II. By the end of the show, the Crime Squad superintendent has recovered all of the spoils; but a press enquiry "Were they after one particular thing?" is met with a curt "no comment"

On the episode commentary (2003), Troy Kennedy Martin is asked whether this was based on any particular crime, and responds "No. Just dreamed up," though he "can't quite think" of the genesis of it. Earlier in the commentary, producer Ted Childs notes that he once had a visit from the Home Office asking whether the show was paying criminals for information; but was able to reassure them that the show simply had young and imaginative writers.

The robbery also loosely inspired the plot of the 2001 comedy High Heels and Low Lifes starring Minnie Driver and Mary McCormack. Driver's character, a nurse, overhears chatter between a robbery gang and their lookout, and when her police report fails to stir any action, she and her friend (McCormack) track down the thieves and attempt to blackmail them.