A Victim Of Fake News: The Tell-All That Shattered Diana's Life

Earl Spencer Wants The Truth To Come Out

It was one of the most astonishing TV interviews of its time. Never before had a member of the royal family been so candid when the cameras were rolling and there was undoubtedly a collective gasp from the 23 million people watching when Princess Diana admitted to Martin Bashir back in 1995 that “there were three of us in this marriage”.

Now, 25 years after BBC TV show Panorama screened the groundbreaking interview with the late princess, in which she also admitted she had been unfaithful to husband Prince Charles with army captain James Hewitt, the show is the subject of a furious attack by her brother Charles, Earl Spencer. Charles says Martin spun “a web of deceit” to clinch his sensational scoop.

Charles says he convinced Diana to do the interview after he was shown bank statements that suggested senior courtiers and one of his employees were being paid by the security services for information on her. He thought his sister should be able to set the record straight about what was going on in her life, instead of lurid details being splashed across the front pages of tabloid newspapers.

But the documents were fake, says Charles, and he and Diana were both setup.

He says, “If it were not for me seeing those statements, I would never have introduced Bashir to my sister. In turn, he would have remained just one of thousands of journalists hoping that he or she had a tiny chance of getting her to speak to them, with no realistic prospect of doing so.”