Princess Diana’s brother has expressed anger over claims he colluded with journalist Martin Bashir ahead of her 1995 Panorama interview, and threatened to sue a filmmaker investigating the controversy.
Earl Spencer, 59, has insisted he did not conspire with Bashir and said he would have taken legal action if a previously confidential BBC document containing these claims had been reported as true.
Giving evidence to a first tier information rights tribunal, he dismissed a suggestion at an earlier hearing that the allegation was already in the public domain when the broadcaster released the document.
Charles Spencer threatened to sue a filmmaker if the claims of collusion were published— (PA)
“I do not believe it was,” he said. “It does not seem likely to me and I can’t think why they [the BBC] would say that.”
A barrister representing the BBC has now written to the tribunal accepting that the claim was not in the public domain at the time it was released.
After the document was provided to filmmaker Andy Webb, Spencer threatened to “sue you and Channel 4” if a planned documentary for the 25th anniversary of the interview repeated the claims without checking the allegation.
The current tribunal will rule on whether documents should be released under the Freedom of Information Act, with Webb seeking the release of further documents which he believes contain evidence of the BBC’s cover up.
The scandal around Princess Diana’s explosive Panorama interview emerged after the BBC released a heavily redacted briefing by the former head of news, Lord Hall of Birkenhead.
The document had been provided to the broadcaster’s governors in 1996, and suggested that Spencer had provided bank statements of his former head of security to Bashir.
These statements were then altered by the journalist to falsely appear as though Diana’s aides were colluding with the tabloid media.
Diana revealed intimate details about the state of her marriage during the hour-long interview (Stefan Rousseau/PA)— (PA Archive)
Filmed secretly in her sitting room at Kensington Palace, Diana spoke of her post-natal depression and bulimia. She also famously said “there were three of us in this marriage” in reference her husband’s extra-marital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Viewed by nearly 23 million people in the UK, it was hailed as the scoop of a generation while also acting as the catalyst for the royal couple’s divorce.
However, Webb’s documentary which revealed Bashir’s methods for obtaining the interview led the BBC to commission an investigation.
Led by Lord Dyson, it concluded that the 1996 inquiry had been “woefully ineffective” and that executives have covered up Bashir’s “deceitful behaviour”.
The Prince of Wales condemned the Panorama interview as a “major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse” and voiced his opinion that it should never been shown again.
