Politics
Princess Diana was so frightened she spoke out to save her own life
DISGRACED BBC presenter Martin Bashir, who illicitly snagged the television scoop of the century when he interviewed Princess Diana, was the great seducer.
He used a potent combination of charm, flattery, humility — and make-believe — to get his victims to sit down and confess all in front of the cameras.
Princess Diana was so frightened she spoke out to save her own life, says Andrew Morton[/caption]
The notorious one-on-one chat was watched by 23 million[/caption]
Diana wasn’t the only one. Michael Jackson was another who felt conned into confession.
Bashir though was the 100-1 outsider who beat allcomers — including Oprah Winfrey, David Frost, Clive James and Barbara Walters — to land the sit-down of the century with Diana in 1995.
Bashir swooped in and scooped everyone. I should know. At the time I was helping TV rivals ITV with a documentary on Diana that focused on her charity work.
We had even filmed her among the down-and-outs in London’s South Bank — with her knowledge and cooperation.
Little did we know the royal outsider would become the insider.
How did Bashir convince Diana to tell all? Quite simple. He scared her half to death.
He told her that he had contacts inside the security forces, MI5 and that they were monitoring her. Bashir had first made contact with her brother Charles Spencer and showed him bank statements, all fakes, purporting to demonstrate a conspiracy against her.
She already felt that she was being watched, spied on, her every move monitored and analysed.
Bashir now gave her proof. He became her new media “bestie”, trusted with her secrets.
There was always a cloak and dagger drama surrounding their meetings. They met in shadowy venues like underground car parks.
Scary at the best of times, but terrifying if you think someone dangerous is watching you. Diana did. Thanks to our Martin.
In short, her famous BBC interview was not an act of self-indulgence as the Queen and rest of the Royal Family believed, but a deliberate act of self-preservation.
Bashir has been blamed for the misery in the final two years of Diana’s life[/caption]
Earl Spencer claimed Bashir planted a bug in Diana’s Kensington Palace flat to gain her confidence[/caption]
Diana, who was genuinely frightened, felt that by speaking out she would save her life.
In the climate of dread he helped create and exploit, she spoke out to pre-empt any attempt to discredit her, or worse, by the dark forces that she now believed stalked and watched her.
She was in fear of her life, feeling actually threatened. The forged bank statements made her feel, according to a close friend, “terror and horror”.
By September 1995, she had built up a considerable rapport with Bashir — enough to go with him on a five-hour journey to the New Forest.
“He’s not had an easy life,” Diana told her butler Paul Burrell, “I enjoyed talking to him.”
So much so that she would smuggle him into Kensington Palace to discuss latest developments.
‘BETRAY HER TRUST’
Bashir convinced her that her apartment was bugged. In fact, she’d had her rooms swept before for bugs during my interviews with her for my biography, Diana: Her True Story.
Bashir also made her believe that her private secretary Patrick Jephson was taking money to betray her trust.
There are powerful voices — Prince William, Earl Spencer and Jephson — who believe that the interview propelled her into that tunnel in Paris in August 1997.
I profoundly and respectfully disagree. Diana, as Lord Dyson noted in the first pages of his report, was keen to do an interview.
Nicholas Witchell was the first choice, with experienced broadcasters like Sue Lawley waiting in the wings.
As I say, she was already quietly doing filming with ITV. Without Bashir, it would have been a different interview to that conjured by him, but it would still have hit the headlines as she was determined to speak her truth.
Charles, Diana, William and Harry pictured together as a family in 1995[/caption]
She may have pushed other buttons — for example discussing the notorious letters from Prince Philip, her relationship with the Queen Mother and some of the other men in her life, like England rugby captain Will Carling.
But never forget that when the camera started rolling, she was the one controlling the narrative. Nobody, not even Bashir, was twisting her arm to say that there were three in the marriage.
Indeed, when I first watched the interview it was like seeing a TV version of my book, Diana: Her True Story, which she had secretly cooperated with for two years. And I didn’t need any dodgy bank statements to get her to sit down and talk into a tape recorder for eight hours. She did it willingly.
While we are about it, let’s not totally rewrite history in the rush to beat up Bashir and the BBC. Prince William said that the programme was a “major contribution to why my parents’ relationship worsened”.
But he was forgetting that they had taken the dramatic step of separating in December 1992, years before Diana had ever heard Bashir’s name.
I doubt that he has forgotten the day, pre-Bashir, he pushed tissues under the bathroom door as his mother sobbed inside. That, sadly, is part of the true story of her life.
And the reason why she said there were three in the marriage is because there were. The third wheel is now the future queen.
As for the lack of protection on that fateful night in Paris — yes, she had Barnum and Bailey security. But if she had been wearing a seatbelt, she would be alive today. Simple.
Diana had given up official Scotland Yard protection before Panorama, not afterwards.
Even so, she hired her own man, Princess Anne’s former bodyguard, Colin Tebbut, to accompany her while she was out and about in London and elsewhere.
He was loyal and professional. Indeed he was invited to Diana’s burial at Althorp — one of a handful of those outside the family allowed to attend.
After the interview, which took place on a quiet Sunday at Kensington Palace, Bashir’s boss, Richard Ayre, said that the conversation could bring down the BBC or the monarchy or both.
Prince Harry speaks about mental health in an Apple TV+ documentary series with Oprah[/caption]
Martin Bashir insists he was not responsible for Princess Diana’s death[/caption]
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He admitted that they were handling potential dynamite. At last the dynamite has blown up in the faces of those involved with this historic interview.
Lord Dyson, who led the six- month investigation, described Bashir’s behaviour as “incredible, unreliable and dishonest”.
It has taken more than 25 years — but finally the great seducer has been caught with his pants down.
