Earl Spencer on Diana's Panorama Interview: "My Sister Was the Victim of an Appalling Deception" by the BBC
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In a new essay, Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer is condemning the "the agonising lies" told by the BBC to Diana to secure the 1995 Panorama interview.
Spencer was prompted to write this essay following last week's settlement between the BBC and Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Prince William and Prince Harry's nanny, in which the broadcaster promised it will never air the interview again.
BBC Director General Tim Davie also wrote, "I would like to take this opportunity to apologise publicly to [Tiggy Legge-Bourke], to The Prince of Wales, and to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, for the way in which Princess Diana was deceived and the subsequent impact on all their lives."
That settlement, Spencer writes, "once again shone a light on the appalling, deceitful conduct of those pursuing the interview."
Journalist Martin Bashir first reached out to Spencer during summer 1995. "What Mr Bashir told me was shocking - a series of tales so extraordinary that, as soon as he left, I called Panorama’s executive producer, who confirmed it was all true and that I could trust Mr Bashir," Spencer recalls in a new essay for Mail Plus.
But, he continues, "Over the following three weeks I feel that I was groomed: I was shown forged bank statements; I was told of underhand payments, of spying, and of appalling deception. But, all along I was the one being deceived in order for Mr Bashir to get to my late sister, through me."
He writes that "Diana was extremely vulnerable" at the time, and her secrets were appearing in the press, likely due to phone hacking she was unaware of—so "she was accepting of the outrageous claims that dark forces were at work."
In September 1995, Spencer introduced his sister to Bashir, but he writes he was "struck by a number of discrepancies between what he told my late sister and what he had told me previously." After their meeting, Spencer apologized to his sister for wasting her time, and spoke of those "discrepancies," which he does not detail in this essay. Diana reportedly replied, "Don’t worry, Carlos, it doesn’t matter — it was lovely to see you anyway." (Carlos was Diana's name for her brother.)
Spencer writes that he assumed the interview was dead in the water.
Yet, a few weeks later, he heard that the interview would be happening—and since, he's been fighting to understand how the BBC let it happen. He ends his essay with a call to the police to investigate this "terrible scandal" and the "unlawful and criminal behaviour" that went into securing the interview.
He concludes that the 1995 Panorama interview "led Diana to feel even more exposed and alone, and deceived her into forgoing those who cared for her and would have protected her."
He adds, "She may well have chosen to grant the media an interview anyway - and if she had, I’d have fully supported her - but the agonising lies that she was told by the BBC before their cameras finally rolled ensured that she came into that Panorama interview with a very skewed and false view of the situation she was in, having been lied to repeatedly."
He then accuses the BBC of essentially paving the way for his sister's death in Paris two years later, writing, "This led to her speaking in a way that set her on a course where she was without due protection when she needed it most." Because, as he writes, on the day of her tragic car crash in Paris, Diana had no royal protection officers with her.
He ends his 993-word essay with a strong statement: "All those responsible must be held to account."
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