This week marks 30 years since Princess Diana sat down with Martin Bashir for a 54-minute Panorama interview that shocked the world. At just 34, Diana spoke candidly about her relationship with the then Prince Charles – famously remarking, "there were three of us in this marriage" – and revealed her struggles with bulimia, as well how lonely and isolating royal life could be.
The anniversary coincides with the release of Dianarama, a new book by Andy Webb that explores how the interview came about and the profound consequences it had for Diana.
In this week’s episode of A Right Royal Podcast, host Andrea Caamano speaks with Andy Webb, who has been investigating the story for over 20 years. Andy, who worked for the BBC, explains how Martin Bashir first deceived Charles Spencer to secure a meeting with Diana and manipulate her into agreeing to the interview. The now-disgraced journalist went to extreme lengths to convince Prince William and Prince Harry's mother that everyone around her was untrustworthy – even claiming Prince William had been given a bugged watch and showing her a fake abortion clinic receipt allegedly signed by Prince Charles for their children’s nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke. The BBC has since accepted these specific allegations, paying substantial damages to Tiggy in 2022 for the "false and malicious" claims used to obtain the interview.
In his book, Andy details that the BBC was aware of Martin's unlawful methods before Diana's death in 1997 and reflects on the tragic implications of failing to tell her.
"They knew enough, in my view, to have gone to Diana and said, 'Look, Your Royal Highness, we're terribly, terribly sorry to have to tell you that our reporter, Martin Bashir, he's actually a fraudster. He's been using forged documents. And not only that, he's been lying about the forged documents to us back here at the BBC.'
"They didn't do that. You say to yourself, then, how could Diana's life have been different in the 18 months only that elapsed from the Panorama interview to the deadly car crash in Paris - 18 months?"
Andy, who has had Charles Spencer's help with the book, also shared Diana's brother's perspective: "As a result of the Panorama interview, as a result of Diana having been thoroughly convinced, wrongly, that people around her were not to be trusted, specifically her private secretary, Patrick, was not to be trusted. Diana pushed those people away. In those last 18 months of her life, she was not surrounded by these wise, sensible people. On a very practical level, she got rid of her chauffeur. She was told that her chauffeur couldn't be trusted. She had decided to get rid of all of the official private security. 18 months later, where is she? She's in Paris. She's been driven in a car. The driver is drunk, it's the ramshackle kind of so-called security apparatus provided by Mohamed Al-Fayed – and she's dead."
Andy added: "Would Diana's life have followed the course it followed? Would she have found herself with Dodi Fayed, for instance? Well, I think that's probably vastly unlikely. So that's Charles's view. He handed his answer to me by saying, ‘Yes, I think it has to be said that the consequences of the Panorama interview were lethal – were lethal."
Andy also spoke with Patrick Jephson, Diana's former private secretary, who agreed: "Yes, you can draw a line from Panorama to Paris. That line can be drawn."
© Photo: Getty ImagesAndy's findings were famously vindicated by the 2021 Lord Dyson Report, an independent inquiry which officially concluded that Martin Bashir used 'deceitful behaviour' to secure the interview and that the BBC 'fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency' by covering it up."
Elsewhere in the episode, we talk to HELLO! Editor Jessica Callan about this week’s issue, which focuses on Prince George's appearance at the Festival of Remembrance with his mother, and what it signifies for a "new royal era".
