BBC news executives kept reporter Martin Bashir’s explosive 1995 interview with Princess of Wales Diana under wraps and didn’t inform the corporation's chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, about it, fearing his wife would tell Buckingham Palace, according to the Times, which cited a recent ITV documentary.
Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story, told the docu that the princess was concerned that the royals would take steps to halt the interview.
“What terrified Diana was that Marmaduke Hussey would put a stop to doing the interview,” he said. “So it was absolutely necessary for Martin Bashir and his colleagues to be secretive.”
The Times cites a friend of Richard Ayre, who was in charge of the BBC's editorial policy, who said he and his colleague Steve Hewlett, who was head of Panorama, had concerns that Marmaduke Hussey would tell his wife Lady Susan Hussey, a lady-in-waiting and godmother to Prince William, about the tell-all interview.
The duo also reportedly violated corporate rules by failing to tell the BBC's royal liaison unit about the interview, in which Diana revealed both Charles’ and her own infidelity, because it was likewise considered to be too close to the royal family.
Hailed by British journalists at the time as “the scoop of the century,” the interview was viewed by an estimated 23 million people and catapulted Diana’s BBC interviewer, Bashir, to international fame overnight. In it, the Princess of Wales spoke candidly of her “crowded” marriage to Prince Charles, notoriously saying there were “three of us” and that due to her despair she suffered from “rampant bulimia.”
However, five months later, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Bashir had commissioned graphic designer Matt Wiessler to forge bank statements to convince Diana that her staff were ostensibly leaking stories about her and royal spies were allegedly following her, in order to win her trust.
In the wake of the allegations, the BBC launched a review of the programme the following year, with a part of it overseen by Tony Hall, who was head of news and current affairs – he retired as director-general in August this year.
“The BBC has been able, independently, to verify that these documents were put to no use which had any bearing, direct or indirect, on the Panorama interview with the Princess of Wales” the review stated.
Yet, last month, after renewed publicity around the anniversary of the interview, Earl Spencer, Diana’s younger brother, called for a fresh investigation into the interview and how it was shot, suggesting the corporation “whitewashed” people central to the controversy in its initial probe.
The BBC's Panorama programme has since announced the launch of an unprecedented investigation into its own dealings in an effort to get to the bottom of the matter, 25 years after it aired Bashir’s interview and sold international rights for $1.6 million.
“The BBC is taking this very seriously, and we want to get to the truth,” Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, said in November, adding they are “in the process of commissioning a robust and independent investigation.”
Diana, who at the time of the Panorama interview was legally separated from Prince Charles but not yet divorced, died in 1997 at the age of 36, in a car crash in Paris, along with her lover, Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed.
