By Helen Rowe, AFP
The BBC has come under fire again in a new book about its bombshell interview with the late Princess Diana, 30 years after it was aired. Photo: JEAN-LOUP GAUTREAU
The BBC has come under fire again in a new book about its bombshell interview with the late Princess Diana, 30 years after it was aired.
A record 22.8 million people watched the interview on 20 November, 1995 in which Diana famously admitted adultery and said there had been "three people" in her marriage -- her, Charles and his long-time mistress Camilla Parker Bowles.
The programme was seen as a journalistic coup for reporter Martin Bashir and the BBC at the time but later unravelled when it emerged the journalist had faked documents to secure the interview.
Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana was released on Thursday (local time) in the UK.
Penguin Books said the book by former BBC journalist Andy Webb revealed the "true extent of the deception the princess experienced as well as the cover-up which ensued".
To secure the interview, Bashir showed Diana's brother Charles Spencer faked bank statements.
These were intended to show that some of those closest to Diana were spying on her.
British journalist Martin Bashir. Photo: Getty Images
'Life in danger'
Diana was "assured" by Bashir that "her life was in danger", Webb told the Good Morning Britain programme on the BBC's commercial competitor ITV.
Although the depth of Bashir's subterfuge only became clear years later, Webb said the BBC realised he had done "three bad things" only four months after broadcast.
He said they discovered he had faked the documents, shown them to Spencer and then lied about it when challenged by the BBC.
The publication of the book comes after the BBC's director general announced his resignation following a damaging row over misleading editing of a documentary about Donald Trump.
The BBC paid damages to Diana's former private secretary Patrick Jephson over the 1995 interview and a graphic designer who blew the whistle on the underhand methods used.
British newspaper headlines in 1995 following Princess Diana's Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. Photo: AFP or licensors
'Lethal' interview
Webb said Diana's brother traced a line between what happened after the interview and her death less than two years later in a car crash in Paris.
"Diana pushed away the people around her in particular her (private) secretary Patrick Jephson," he said.
"She'd been told that her chauffeur was a spy. She has no confidence in the police official security so she ends up 18 months later in a Mercedes with a drunk driver.
"And Charles (Spencer) ends by saying that yes, frankly, the consequences of the interview were lethal," he added.
Diana - mother of heir to the throne Prince William and his estranged brother Harry - was 36 when she died in a high-speed crash in Paris in August 1997 while being chased by the paparazzi.
Bashir later apologised for his conduct, but maintained it had "no bearing whatsoever on the personal choice by Princess Diana to take part in the interview".
An independent report commissioned by the BBC and published in 2021 lifted the lid on the deceptive methods that Bashir used.
A BBC spokesperson said it had accepted the findings of that report "in full and publicly apologised".
Diana and Charles formally divorced in 1996. Charles, now King Charles III, and Camilla married in 2005.
- AFP
