Martin Bashir and the BBC have done the world a great service. They have proven, beyond all doubt, that lying doesn’t work.
In 1995, after meeting Bashir for the first time, Prince William reportedly told Princess Diana: “He’s a sly creep, Mummy.” A quarter of a century later, that opinion is shared by any who glance at the fallout of the BBC inquiry into its failures around the explosive Panorama interview that year.
The fact Bashir faked documents, lied about her in-laws, played on the fears of a vulnerable woman, and groomed her brother to help him get access, is foul journalism. Not only was it unethical, and potentially criminal, they could be so easily refuted that they could only ever destroy the trust of the princess and undermine the credibility, not only of the reporter, but the organisation he worked for. Every journalist in the world will, now, have to overcome what he did when seeking an interview with almost anyone.
The Press are enjoying kicking the BBC, which kicked them so hard over phone-hacking. Politicians are relishing the chance to haul Auntie over her own coals, for once. And there are two princes who find it easy to criticise media coverage, and harder to talk about the wearing of seatbelts. As a result, there are a lot of things in Lord Dyson’s report into the affair not getting the attention they should – and quite a lot that’s been forgotten entirely.
1. Princess Diana was desperate to do an interview
Diana officially separated from Prince Charles in December 1992, following a shocking biography by Andrew Morton which detailed her bulimia, personal misery, and her husband’s affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. In March the following year, Dyson found that she rejected the offer of a BBC interview with Sue Lawley.
Then in June 1994, her husband gave an ITV interview to Jonathan Dimbleby in which he admitted adultery. It was shattering and humiliating for Diana, and, the report found, she “would probably have agreed to be interviewed by any experienced and reputable reporter in whom she had confidence, even without the intervention of Mr Bashir.”
In August 1995 her friend Baroness Jay approached the BBC on her behalf. The suggestion was for a Panorama interview with then-diplomatic correspondent Nicholas Witchell, focusing on her charity work and future role in public life. Dyson writes that: “It is clear that Princess Diana was now very keen to talk to the BBC.” Later that month, Diana’s staff were organising a meeting with Witchell and she wrote a memo saying “I am v keen to be in this meeting” and asking what time it would be.
Panorama bosses switched Witchell for Bashir. Lord Dyson does not say why, nor whether it derailed the project, or made no difference. He also does not explain why, when the princess was already negotiating with Panorama , Bashir approached her brother to gain access.
But it’s clear that, if she didn’t talk to Bashir, she’d have talked to someone else.
2. The Panorama interview did not cause Diana’s divorce
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In his statement yesterday, Prince William said: “The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse.”
By the time the interview aired, his parents had each conducted multiple affairs; his mother had attempted suicide; she had co-operated extensively with Morton on his book, revealing her bulimia and naming Camilla Parker-Bowles; she and her husband had both fed stories to favoured journalists; secret tapes of her being called ‘Squidgy’, and her husband fantasising about being Camilla’s tampon, had been leaked to the Press and aired on premium-rate phone lines; and the Prime Minister had announced the Wales’ official separation three years earlier.
And of course, her husband had allowed Jonathan Dimbleby more than a year of access for a documentary in which he admitted cheating, trashed his parents, and was seen chatting to his geraniums.
It is hard to see how the Panorama interview could possibly have made that marriage any worse. It would always have led to divorce, but perhaps one that was slightly less embarrassing to the young prince.
3. Princess Diana was paranoid long before she met Bashir
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Prince William said the interview with Diana “contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia, and isolation”. The Dyson report is clear that Bashir met her for the first time on September 19, 1995, and found that he had shown her brother fake bank statements to convince him that household staff were selling information to the Press and the security services. There were claims, too, that some royal reporters were taking bribes, that cars, phones, and watches were bugged, and a lie that Royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke had an abortion.
Yet by the time of the interview, Diana had been under the influence of crackpot clairvoyants for years. They subsequently were sources of hundreds of newspaper articles, wrote books, and even now claim to be speaking to Diana in the afterlife. Dyson found that two years earlier, in 1993, Diana had written to her butler Paul Burrell that Charles was “in love” with Tiggy.
He also found that, in his meetings with Bashir, Charles Spencer had revealed that he had taken out an injunction against a former staff member over fears he was selling stories about his family. And on October 31, 1995, Diana had a meeting with her personal lawyer Lord Mishcon in which she made a series of paranoid claims. Dyson reveals a note made at the time, which says: “Efforts would be made if not to get rid of her (be it by some accident in her car, such as pre-prepared brake failure or whatever), now and then, then at least to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared unbalanced. She was convinced that there was a conspiracy.”
Dyson concludes: “I am satisfied that, by the time of the meeting, Princess Diana had paranoid fears about various things including that she was being spied on and was in danger of her life.”
Bashir undeniably played on her fears, perhaps made them worse – but they were pretty bad before he showed up.
4. The interview did not lead to her death in a Paris car crash
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The fallout from the interview was so bad that the Queen urged Charles and Diana to divorce. During talks, the princess offered to give up the title of Her Royal Highness, reportedly in return for more personal freedom. She also dropped her Royal protection, which she had come to distrust as her paranoia grew.
But with her brother injuncting his own staff, and Royal households notoriously leaky, she would probably always have suspected her bodyguards. Journalists have frequent, unofficial contact with police officers for all sorts of reasons – with Royalty, it’s usually so the police know who’s a genuine reporter and who’s a nutter. A paranoid Diana could easily have misconstrued that as a betrayal.
Her brother said he draws a line between the interview and her death. “When she died two years later, she was without any form of real protection,” he said. Former editor Andrew Neil writes today that, had the BBC admitted what had happened in its first investigation in 1996, “she might have realised that the ‘Establishment’ was not out to get her and that there was no need to cut herself off entirely from it”.
But if you remove Bashir and his lies, you still have years of misery, mistrust, and fury at the Royals who left her to tumble down the stairs, cut her wrists, and struggle with the effects of extreme anxiety and massive media attention.
And had she divorced Charles but kept her taxpayer-funded protection, as she travelled to UN conferences and African minefields, used Mediterranean yachts and pop stars’ mansions, dated heart surgeons and playboys, there would have been outrage in the media, in Parliament, and among the public that an ex-Royal was still costing millions. She would have been under huge pressure to drop it and fund it herself as soon as she stepped back from Royal duties, because that’s exactly what happened to Harry last year.
The chances of her retaining that security when she died in August 1997, a full year after the divorce was complete, is next to non-existent.
5. Nothing has changed or looks likely to
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Prince Harry said: “Our mother lost her life because of this, and nothing has changed.”
Well, yes and no. Diana was vulnerable from childhood, treated horrifically by many of those that she loved, and betrayed by many of those she trusted. She was a global icon of womanhood, and as such was repeatedly exploited and mistreated by men. Her chances of a happy old age were as slim as those of Marilyn Monroe, or Anne Boleyn. We are unable to say it, because a young girl marrying a prince is supposed to be the answer to everything, but Diana was a tragedy waiting to happen.
But he’s right in that nothing has changed. Journalists have always been excellent at sniffing out things that smell bad, like foxes who’ve had a whiff of raw chicken. They had Bashir and his lies early on, and 25 years later they have persisted to get the BBC and its cover-up, too.
That cover-up was conducted by idiots, who had the journalistic nose of Lord Voldemort. Knowing that Bashir had lied to them 3 times, they did not smell a rat and instead called him a man of integrity. Lord Dyson found him to be “incredible, unreliable, and, in some cases, dishonest” – a summing up that will be in his obituary. It seems that the more useless a person is, the higher in any organisation they are promoted. In this case Bashir’s boss Tony Hall made it all the way to Director-General.
Royals are still determined to give interviews. Diana managed two in her entire life, but her youngest son has given so many people have perhaps not noticed that in his latest he’s accused the Royal Family of “total neglect”, the same as his mother did quarter of a century ago, and with significantly less impact.
Yet the Royals are still rewriting history as it suits, finding it easier to attack the media that they are desperate to speak to for saying things they don’t want to hear. Harry and William have every right to criticise Bashir and the BBC, and to be furious over the loss of their mother and her unhappiness.
But her death was due to a thousand things that went wrong over decades. The last two to which she fell victim were a drugged and drunk driver, and not wearing a seatbelt, something which in 2018 cost 261 lives in the UK. Her sons have yet to find the time to campaign on either of these things.
Nothing has changed. A “sly creep” committed a foul act with absolutely no reason to do so, an organisation run by prats protected itself in the short-term at the expense of its reputation in the long-term, and a complicated woman exploited all her life has been exploited, yet again. The same things will happen today, and tomorrow, in any given group of humans. Judging from the fact it has 7 separate inquiries underway into unethical behaviour, lies and institutional failures, it’s happening right now in Downing Street.
While bashing Bashir, we ignore the fundamental issue which is the utterly toxic way Royal women are treated, an issue raised by Boudica, Empress Matilda, and every single queen and princess since.
Lying about that won’t make it go away. And it is proof of what every journalist knows is true: what they don’t tell you is the story.