Original subtitles

On Bonfire Night a quarter of a century ago, the most famous

woman in the world is preparing for a TV interview that will

cause a sensation.

With her are a team from the BBC's current affairs programme, Panorama.

And what they're doing in secret

will make headlines the world over...

...it will change the course of her life

and also British history.

Do you think you will ever be queen?

No, I don't. No.

Princess Diana spoke bluntly about her husband and his mistress.

There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.

And, most damning of all, Charles just isn't cut out to be king.

I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous

limitations to him.

It was like a missile aimed at Buckingham Palace.

But there are two big questions.

Why did Diana decide to go public?

Who persuaded her?

She was vulnerable to people who could get

her to believe things.

A mysterious and complex web of secret meetings

and forgeries is emerging. Of fear and ambition.

A BBC reporter produced fake documents suggesting Diana's family

was being spied on.

So was the princess tricked into talking by the BBC?

And what was her state of mind at that time?

The full story of Diana's historic interview has never been told

on television...

...until now.

Princess Diana gave two TV interviews, which are part

of British history.

One on BBC Panorama, 25 years ago.

The first on a grey winter's day, almost 40 years ago.

She began this day as a flat-sharing

19-year-old nursery school teacher...

...but was on her way to a different life altogether.

That afternoon, a change of venue, a change of outfit...

...and Diana's life would never be the same again.

As a member of the British public, I thought, "This is a rather

"marvellous, wonderful thing."

I suppose I was part of the dream of that relationship working.

Yesterday, a Nanny looking after children.

Now you're about to marry the Prince of Wales and one day

would, in all likelihood, be queen.

It's a tremendous change for someone of 19 to make

all of a sudden.

It is, but I've had a small run up it all, the last six months.

And next to Prince Charles, I know I can't go wrong.

He's there with me.

And, I suppose, in love? Of course. Yes!

Her next historic interview

came 15 years later. By then, she'd given that question

a great deal of thought.

After a brief period of family togetherness - the arrival of first

Prince William, then Harry - by 1987, the marriage was dead...

...Charles and Diana living separate lives...

"fighting what was known as the War of the Waleses.

I can tell you from my place, I suppose, in the front lines

of this war, it felt real enough to us.

It was a very accurate shorthand for what was going on.

It was a war, on the one hand for public opinion,

but for Princess Diana, increasingly,

it was a war of survival.

By the turn of the decade, Diana is a well-practised warrior.

On holiday here with William, Harry and a bunch of playmates, Diana

is secretly devising her own survival strategy.

It's one which she'll later repeat in her dealings with the BBC.

Diana singled out one of the huge number of journalists chasing

an exclusive interview.

A young member of the press pack, Andrew Morton.

Andrew Morton's book was a huge landmark in the history of the

Royal family in the late 20th century,

you could almost divide time

up between before Morton and after Morton.

Diana felt trapped.

Effectively she was a prisoner of the palace

and that, by speaking to me,

she could speak over the heads of the people she called

"The men in grey" and get her story out.

Diana's HQ in the War of the Waleses was Kensington Palace.

For secrecy's sake, Andrew Morton couldn't be seen there.

So what we did, we used an intermediary. Long-time friend,

mutualfriend, and I prepared questions, which I sent to him.

He would cycle up to Kensington Palace, with a battered old tape

recorder, plug a microphone onto Diana.

When I heard the first tape, it was just like entering a parallel

universe, stepping through the wardrobe in Narnia.

Wearing cheap headphones in a workman's cafe in north London,

he listened as Diana described a loveless marriage, depression,

self-harming and suicide attempts.

All these chaps were in their overalls or eating their bacon

and eggs and so on... I was listening to Diana unfold

this very different version of her life.

It was a total revelation.

If Diana was not in the mood, the answers were a little bit, "Yes

or no." Sometimes she was full of energy, wanted to talk

about all kinds of things. Her eating disorders.

About cries for help and this woman that nobody had ever really heard

of at the time...

"Camilla Parker Bowles.

Prince Charles's lover, now his wife, was the woman

who attracted such scorn in Diana's Panorama interview.

The third party who made the marriage, "A bit crowded."

With Princess Diana, his secret informant, Andrew Morton's book

was bound to be a sensation.

Published in the summer of 1992,

it was.

The author, Andrew Morton, at the centre of the storm has warned

today that the Princess of Wales now needs help and understanding.

For weeks, royal sources and conservative media said,

"Oh, it's all lies. It can't be true."

It was true.

The next battle in the War of the Waleses

would be fought not in a book or the tabloids, but on television.

Prince Charles was about to make his own explosive revelation.

Two years after Andrew Morton's book lifted the lid on the royal marriage,

at a glittering reception in Hyde Park,

Princess Diana had never looked happier, and more glamorous.

But behind the smiles, she and all the other partygoers were keen

to wrap this up, to rush back home and switch on the TV.

Prince Charles would be talking that night in a major documentary.

What would he say about the marital rift?

She looks stunning.

Everybody thinks that she's in control.

The truth was that she was very nervous before the documentary

came out, how she was in a real tizzy.

The announcement Prince Charles had to make was short,

but devastating.

Yes. Absolutely.

Yes...

...until it became

irretrievably broken down.

What's never been reported until now is that the Prince was not

at all sure that he should confess.

The truth is that there were actually two interviews.

In the first of them, never broadcast,

Charles wouldn't admit to adultery.

But then he changed his mind.

The first interview, the non-confession,

was recorded here at Windsor.

When the documentary team looked at their footage,

they thought, "We have to try again."

There were further talks with the Prince and his people,

including his media advisers.

There were voices that were calling for frankness and there were others

saying, "keep off the family stuff."

The one that went out was to say something briefly

about his personal difficulties, which was his decision.

A few clays later, a film crew was summoned to Highgrove,

Charles's country state.

This time, Charles made his reluctant confession.

Diana said to me, "Patrick, now people can see

"what we've been dealing with."

The Dimbleby confession gave Diana

a sense of being on the moral high ground.

It also planted an idea in Diana's mind.

If Charles could have HIS say on TV, then why shouldn't SHE?

I think, to some extent, it did encourage a rebuttal of some kind.

After Dimbleby,

she certainly intended to do something on television.

And why not?

In the summer of 1995,

Diana was approached by the BBC.

The way that approach was made, the things she was told,

are mysterious and controversial.

What's clear is that, at this point in her life,

Diana believed she had enemies in high places.

It's ironic that somebody who is so well known and loved

around the world actually in so many ways was isolated and vulnerable.

She did not have a network of supportive family and friends.

She had me and a small staff.

She was vulnerable to approaches

from people who had their own agendas to promote...

...who recognised that they could get her to believe things.

Diana was looking for advice and support

from some unexpected sources.

Inside of her, there was, like, this 13, 14-year-old girl.

Simone Simmons is a psychic and healer.

She was a friend and confidant of the Princess

at this time in her life.

Diana was an amazing lady.

Inside, she was very, very naive,

efm,

extremely so.

So she wasn't worldly wise.

Two meetings which Diana had, in secret,

shortly before the BBC interview

showed just how impressionable she'd become.

They're reported here for the first time on television.

The first of those meetings took place three months

before the interview.

Diana drove 70 miles to a country estate in Berkshire.

Friends had arranged a secure setting so that the Princess

could meet with one of the country's most powerful journalists.

I said, "Well, I'm terribly flattered you've come all the way

"down to the country to talk to me", and she said,

"Oh, I was terribly anxious for my side of this to come out".

I spent the best part of a couple of hours with Diana,

and she put on a wonderful show, absolutely gripping stuff.

It became clear, first of all, how much she hated Charles.

Yes, she did hate Charles.

When I said, "Were there ever happy times?",

and she said, "No, the marriage was hell, from day one".

I was amazed by the frankness, the directness,

with which she said that.

And she said that all she cared about was William's succession

to the throne, and she said to me, quite explicitly,

"l don't think Charles can do it."

The outcome she wanted to see was for Charles to stand aside

as heir to the throne and for William to occupy the throne.

This was pretty dynamic stuff.

As the editor of a major newspaper,

he then made a remarkable decision.

I felt that my job was to try and help them keep a lid on the worst

of this, rather than to lift it off.

Diana said a lot of stuff, on several occasions,

which I thought were for the fairies.

She asked me what I knew about a conspiracy to, erm, sort of

have her put down.

And I said, well, it sounded absolutely crazy to me.

But she, I think, did believe this sort of stuff,

and it was one of the many, many things that made one feel

so desperately sorry for her. This sense of vulnerability.

You may be a very streetwise,

brilliant enchantress,

but you can also be not very bright.

If you've got nobody sensible to advise you,

or if you have, you won't TAKE their advice,

you're in a pretty bad place.

APPLAUSE

CHEERING

The rest of the media would have killed for an exclusive

interview with Princess Diana.

It's hard to exaggerate Princess Diana's global media profile

during these years.

And naturally, some of the world's most prominent TV figures

wanted to interview her.

She was always very courteous,

but always said no,

or, more to the point, I used to say no on her behalf.

In the summer of 1995, another potential interviewer

had entered the race,

and one that few people had heard of.

A then 32-year-old TV reporter, Martin Bashir.

He'd spent nine years at the BBC,

the last three on the weekly current affairs programme, Panorama,

and he'd set his sights on winning journalism's greatest prize.

In relation to the pool of personalities,

trying to get an interview with Diana,

he was a non-starter.

He was a 100-1 outsider.

But one of his BBC colleagues back then knew better.

Well, I'd met him a few times, and he's the sort of person

who would be able to convince you to do something.

I think Diana was feeling slightly caged

and that she wasn't getting her side across.

Here's this personable young chap, turns up,

he's representing Panorama.

Martin Bashir has never talked publicly about how he got

his exclusive.

The BBC itself has said amazingly little about how it pulled off

the greatest journalistic coup in its 100-year history.

But you can piece the story together

from eyewitnesses and published accounts by insiders.

The BBC's Director General at the time, John Burt,

gave this account in his memoirs.

"Bashir told us he had been introduced to a former member

"of the intelligence services who claimed that Diana's private

"apartments in Kensington Palace were bugged.

"He talked to people in Diana's circle, including her brother,

"Earl Spencer, and eventually to Diana herself."

Charles Spencer, Diana's brother, was probably the closest

of the Spencers to the Princess.

Having built up confidence with Charles,

Bashir, gets to meet Diana.

The Princess and the reporter talked in private. Then...

I was aware that Princess Diana was planning

some kind of documentary

to highlight the achievements of her main charities and so on.

APPLAUSE

I had no idea that she was planning an exclusive for Martin Bashir

for Panorama. None at all.

The idea of the charitable documentary was a kind of a bluff

to distract attention from the real project, the Panorama idea.

He noticed that, just at this time,

Diana was getting more and more anxious.

She was being encouraged to believe things that were not helping her

maintain a clear grasp of reality.

For example, somebody told her that Kensington Palace was bugged,

but the work that she thought was the bugging of Kensington Palace

was actually a new fire alarm.

Diana was particularly susceptible to being told unlikely things

and then believe them.

Martin Bashir's record at Panorama was chequered

by an earlier incident where he and a colleague

claimed they'd obtained a confidential document

and used it in their programme.

It turned out that they hadn't.

The document in question had simply been mocked up

by a BBC graphic artist.

Something similar was about to happen again.

In his memoir, the BBC's former boss describes Diana's biggest fear.

"She suspected some of her staff were agents working for others,

"whether for Prince Charles' household

"or for a major newspaper group."

Martin Bashir seemed to have inside knowledge that could help.

He'd somehow acquired two remarkable documents.

Bank statements,

confirming that Diana's brother had been betrayed

by a former employee,

his one-time head of security.

The statements showed that the informer had been paid £4,000

by the giant News International,

and £6,500 by a mysterious Jersey-based outfit,

Penfolds Consultants,

perhaps a front company for an intelligence agency.

Bashir showed the statements to Charles Spencer.

Now, there seemed to be proof

that Diana's brother had been betrayed.

Perhaps the same thing was happening to her.

Diana was used to being pressured,

but a once-secret document shows just how frightened she'd become

when she agreed to talk on the BBC.

Just clays before her BBC interview, a visitor arrived

at Kensington Palace and was ushered into Princess Diana's sitting room.

It was her personal lawyer, Lord Mishcon.

Diana's private secretary, Patrick jephson, was also present.

What Diana had to say left her audience speechless.

Such was Lord Mishcon's concern,

that he took a contemporaneous memo aboutit

which is very revealing of Diana's state of mind at that time.

Diana said she had secret information

regarding four different women.

She'd had a tip off that the Queen would abdicate

in six months' time, April 1996.

She said that Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince Charles' lover,

was on her way out.

She'd be, quotes, "put aside".

Diana didn't specify why Charles had flipped,

but there was a clue.

She said that the royal nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke,

had just had an abortion.

Woman number four was Diana herself.

Her informant had told her that once Charles became king,

she would be murdered.

The lawyer took it all down...

...and not a word of it was true.

With Lord Mishcon, I recognised that the princess

wanted this on the record, wanted her lawyer to hear her say this,

but I was puzzled.

Why was she saying these things? Where had she got these ideas from?

The more outlandish the things she was being told,

the more avidly she seemed to swallow them.

The reason why she gave that statement to Lord Mishcon

was in order to protect herself.

Diana was afraid of being bumped off, simple as that.

She wanted people to know that if she died in the next few days,

next few weeks, they would know where to look.

The time gap between Diana's astonishing allegations

and her interview with Martin Bashir is slender.

He and his crew would arrive at Kensington Palace

in just six clays' time.

You've got to look at the Panorama interview

not as an act of self-indulgence, but an act of self-preservation.

As fireworks exploded all over London,

the secret recording took place on November 5th.

The tapes were edited under the strictest security.

Seven clays before the broadcast, the BBC announced what was coming.

And then on November 20th, 23 million people watched

enthralled as Diana demolished her husband's reputation,

as an adulterer, not suited to become king.

Because I know the character, I would think that the top job,

as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him.

And I don't know whether he could adapt to that.

And Diana made it plain that she wouldn't be silenced.

Do you really believe that a campaign

was being waged against you?

Yes, I did, absolutely. Yeah.

Why? I was separated by the Prince of Wales.

I was a problem, full stop. Never happened before.

What do we do with her?

She won't go quietly, that's the problem.

I'll fight till the end.

Do you think you will ever be queen?

CHUCKLES WRYLY

No, I don't. No.

Diana talked about her husband's affair and admitted one of her own

with a young Army officer, James Hewitt.

No.

So many revelations in one interview.

Diana didn't watch it go out.

She spent the evening here, at a charity dinner.

By the time coffee was served, her life had changed irrevocably.

Panorama, I think, will be seen as significant in that it marked

the point at which Diana and the royal family

finally parted company.

I watched it in my office, and, of course, was shocked.

It was so frank on a number of quite private matters.

And, obviously, a huge news story.

The interview made headlines here and across the world.

Inside the BBC, there was elation and congratulations

on the scoop of the century.

But just a few clays later, inside the Panorama office,

the celebrations came to an abrupt halt.

A story was beginning to emerge that cast a shadow

on the BBC's incredible triumph.

A whistle-blower had come forward, saying something odd had happened

just before the interview.

He wanted the bosses to look into it urgently.

He worried he may have been dragged into some sort of con trick

involving the princess.

And isn't forgery a crime?

The problem lay with the documents Martin Bashir had acquired,

suggesting Diana's brother was being spied on.

The whistle-blower said they were forgeries,

without a shadow of a doubt.

He could be certain because he'd been ordered to create them himself

on his computer.

In reality, the convincing looking details of the £4,000 payoff

by a newspaper group were fictitious.

So was the mysterious company who'd paid off the supposed traitor

in Earl Spencer's camp.

Penfolds Consultants was pure invention.

These are the documents shown to Charles Spencer.

How could they help the reporter achieve his goal?

Charles Spencer had had his own run-ins not just with the media,

but what he considered to be outside forces.

He thought that his phones are bugged,

and so when Martin Bashir contacted him,

he was a receptive vessel to stories of Ml5 surveillance and so on.

As Diana's gatekeeper, he was the one who said,

"Well, you can go and speak to Diana."

For this film, we've been briefed by the whistle-blower

who created the forgeries

and talked to someone who met him soon after

the Panorama programme went on air.

This was somebody who was genuinely concerned about the situation

he found himself in.

He explained that he had already been internally to various people

in the BBC to explain his unhappiness and uncertainty

about what he'd been asked to do post hoc, after the event,

as it were, and that he didn't feel that that had gone anywhere.

The way Martin Bashir's forged bank statements came into being

sounds a little like spy fiction.

At the heart of the story is a graphics artist, Matt Wiessler.

He didn't wish to be seen on camera, but has provided

a detailed written account from the time of what took place.

In October 1995, Matt Wiessler was a freelance.

One of his regular jobs was creating computer graphics for Panorama.

But the job he was given one night by Martin Bashir

was like nothing he'd undertaken before.

He was given a list of names, money paid in, money going out.

It all had to look just like the real thing.

And it was a race against the clock.

The main thing about this job was the speed

with which he had to do it - he had nine hours.

Creating these top quality forgeries was an astonishing feat.

His computer, 25 years ago, was state of the art...

...but with just a fraction of the power of a modern one.

Working through the night at his flat in north London,

he finished just as the sun was rising

and the forgeries was superb.

Anybody looking at them would not in any way question them.

A BBC car arrived and the forgeries were rushed off

to a delivery point at Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2.

There, someone would be waiting to collect the package.

Martin Bashir did not respond to a request to appear in this film

or to written questions.

The BBC say he is seriously unwell.

The BBC have confirmed that the forgeries were shown

by Mr Bashir to Princess Diana's brother.

Andrew Morton believes the documents played a key role

in securing the interview screened in November.

I spoke to people who were very, very close to the Princess of Wales

who said that they discussed these statements,

these bank statements, in October 1995.

They were quite specific and they discussed with Diana

the import of these documents and they discussed with Diana

whether or not she should give an interview.

It all makes sense when you realise that she lived in a world of anxiety

and possible surveillance, and that Martin Bashir, very cleverly,

in a very sophisticated way, played on that.

Speaking to those in Diana's circle at that time,

you could get a sense of why the bank statements

were a tipping point that made her mind up

to sit down at Kensington Palace and speak about

her life to Martin Bashir.

The BBC admit that their reporter did commission the forgeries

and showed them to Diana's brother.

So, was this a breach of professional ethics

or was it a crime?

The interview, filmed by BBC Panorama 25 years ago, was one

of the most famous and momentous pieces of television

there's ever been.

For Princess Diana, the fallout was sudden and dramatic.

The Queen wrote to both Prince Charles and Princess Diana

around Christmas '95, saying - a very short letter -

"You must finalise the divorce."

And I remember Diana was...

Er...

She said to me, "Patrick, that's the first letter she's written to me."

For many who watched,

Diana came across as a strong, articulate survivor.

Others saw an overprivileged woman with little to complain about.

Diana said to me, "What did you think of the programme?"

I said, "Oh, God, you made a real prat out of yourself.

"Don't think about you in all of this.

"Look what you have done to the boys.

"What do you think their friends are going to say?

"You've publicly admitted to having an affair with a man

"other than their father."

"Oh, my God, I never thought of that."

It was a missed opportunity for Diana to be who I knew her to be -

a strong, influential woman.

Instead, she turned it into an opportunity for self-indulgence.

She had stamped her foot and made everybody listen,

and she had nothing to say. Nothing new.

The interview was a crucial turning point in Diana's life.

The catalyst for divorce.

And the beginning of a search for someone who could make her happy...

...without the constraints of a royal family.

Her relationship with a billionaire's son, Dodi Fayed,

was tracked avidly by the paparazzi.

It ended tragically for both of them...

...in a Paris road tunnel in August 1997.

Panorama burned her bridges with the rest of the royal family,

cut herself off, ultimately fatally,

from the protection of the royal institution.

All editors, film-makers have to live with their conscience.

He got her at a very, very weak moment.

She said, "He really talked me into it, you know?"

She regretted every minute.

But what of the reporter who won the amazing scoop...

...and the methods he used to get it?

We asked a barrister - a specialist in forgery law -

what do prosecutors look for in a case like this?

What the prosecution authorities would be asking themselves is,

why has somebody put this false bank statement together

if they are not considering using it to deceive somebody?

The interview was a journalistic coup, but we've learned that the BBC

also sold broadcast rights for more than £100,000

and the chances of being prosecuted increase

if the forgery leads to financial gain.

If a false document is used to induce somebody

to give an interview...

...and that interview is a valuable commodity in those circumstances,

that would be an argument that a criminal offence has been committed.

The law obviously does take it very seriously.

There is no time bar on the launching of prosecutions.

Really, the prosecution could be launched at any point

if the criminality comes to light.

The BBC's own account of how the Diana interview was won

has changed substantially over the years.

At an internal inquiry, Martin Bashir was questioned

by bosses, including the then head of the news division, Tony Hall.

A statement followed, saying that the documents had not been used

in any way, which had a bearing on the Panorama interview.

When asked in 2007 to provide notes of the inquiry under

Freedom of Information laws, the BBC said there are none.

Everything was done without putting it down on paper

on a "need-to-know basis".

In October 2020, a BBC statement

said there ARE records from the time.

Martin Bashir had, in fact, admitted showing the forgeries

to Earl Spencer in 1995.

But this recent statement also suggested that Princess Diana

had herself written to the BBC...

...saying, essentially, that she had not been misled.

That creates a further mystery.

When asked in 2007 to see this crucial letter

from the Princess, the BBC replied that they don't, in fact,

have any such letter.

If they received a letter saying the Princess of Wales herself

was very happy with the way that the programme was made,

that would bombproof them against any future concerns.

I find it astonishing that this letter,

according to them, doesn't exist.

Tony Hall, a key figure in the investigation

into the forgeries affair, went on to become boss of the entire BBC

and now sits in the House of Lords.

Martin Bashir became famous

after the Diana interview and moved to the USA.

But, after early success, his career stalled,

suspended by one major network.

He resigned after controversy at a second.

In 2016, he returned to the BBC and was offered a senior position -

editor of religion.

Patrick jephson, Diana's private secretary, resigned shortly after

the Panorama interview, feeling he'd been sidelined,

but also that he'd let the Princess down by failing to see

all that was going on.

It's a regret he carries to this day.

When Panorama came out, part of my visceral reaction was outrage

that somebody should have exploited the Princess in this way.

The image of Diana, captured at a time in her life when she'd come

to believe that dark forces were out to get her,

is burned into the memory.

Part of her legacy that will always live on.

And perhaps that's also something to regret.

Knowing the Princess as I did...

...making her perform like this was a combination

of both seduction and betrayal.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media