Diana: In Pursuit of Love (28 page)

A BBC statement backed their reporter to the hilt, declaring:

The draft graphic reconstructions on which this story [in the
Mail on Sunday
] is based have no validity and have never been published. They were set up for graphics purposes in the early part of an investigation and were discarded when some of the information could not be substantiated. They were never connected in any way to the
Panorama
on Princess Diana, and there was never any intention to publish them in the form we believe they have been leaked. Their use would never have been sanctioned at a high editorial level and if they had been transmitted it would have been a clear breach of our editorial guidelines.

As Richard Lindley, the author of a history of the programme,
Panorama
: 50
Years of Pride and Paranoia
, remarked, ‘But if that was the case, what exactly had they been intended for? The press release did not say.’ At the time the TV critic Paul Donovan noted that the BBC had studiously refused to report on the growing disquiet. ‘By the BBC’s own admission it paid money to fabricate bank statements for what precise reason it will not say and we do not know,’ he commented. ‘Is that really a legitimate use of licence payers’ money?’ (It might be noted that the BBC’s statement, although it says that the bank documents had nothing to do with Diana, does not say that she was
not
shown them, but only implies that she did not see them.)

As the documents were faked in October, just a few days before Diana gave the go-ahead for the interview, which itself took place on 5 November, the BBC’s argument that they were forged ‘in the early part of an investigation’ seems disingenuous, even more so in the light of Bashir’s comments to Matt Wiessler. Certainly, Diana’s circle have firmly and consistently disputed the claim that the Princess was never shown the bank statements. Diana actually
discussed them with her friends
before
the programme was broadcast in November 1995 – and long before the documents became public knowledge in April 1996.

More than that, the Princess discussed with her friends the proposed format of the programme in the weeks before the November interview. In the early days of her conversations with Bashir, the Princess had spoken of making a documentary divided into two parts, the first part dealing with her fears about the involvement of the security forces in her life, confronting head-on the role of Prince Charles’s circle and senior Buckingham Palace figures in the machinations against her. She was also going to talk about the constant media harassment she faced, she said, harassment which prompted her to talk about the need for a privacy law when she encountered Lord Wakeham, then chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, at a dinner party held, ironically, just before the broadcast.

No longer a victim, Diana intended to take the fight to those whom she called ‘the enemy’. She reasoned, according to her circle, that if she made public the secret campaign against her, it would forestall any prospective, possibly critical, moves against her. In the interview as it was broadcast, while it dealt substantially with her own problems, both medical and marital, the Princess also made frequent references to the forces arrayed against her. She realized that if she was viewed as a problem when she was inside the royal family, now on the outskirts, she was perceived as a constant menace. ‘I was the separated wife of the Prince of Wales, I was a problem, full stop. Never happened before, what do we do with her?’ she was to say to Martin Bashir, adding, ‘They [the royal household] see me as a threat of some kind.’

The second part of the documentary was intended to be a more traditional royal film about her changing role, detached but still linked to the royal family. It was to concentrate on her charity work, particularly with the Red Cross, and refer to her ambitions to be an ambassador for the country at large. This too appeared in the broadcast, remembered especially for her desire to be the ‘queen of people’s hearts’. It seems that, in the course of discussions with Bashir, the scope of the programme was widened to
embrace all aspects of her life. Indeed it was a concern of those BBC executives who were now in the loop, Richard Ayre, for instance, that the interview should not be seen as a propaganda exercise for the Princess, which would compromise the reputation of
Panorama
for producing impartial, hard-hitting broadcasting.

As the Princess nervously mulled over the prospect of unburdening her thoughts in a TV confessional, she took soundings from more than just her close friends about the advisability of her dramatic course of action. She spoke to media-savvy characters like Clive James and David Puttnam about appearing on television. During their conversations she never revealed the underlying fear for her life that impelled her forwards. All those she consulted were aghast at the idea, believing that she would lose the moral high ground she had occupied ever since Prince Charles’s Dimbleby interview in 1994. ‘On two occasions,’ David Puttnam remembered, ‘she told me that she had been given the opportunity to put her side of the story and asked me what did I think. I said it was the worst idea I have ever heard.’ Even Diana’s confidants were unsure about her course of action, believing that the Princess overestimated her ability to weather such a daunting hour-long interview: ‘She had zero control and there were zero rehearsals. She was a very smart woman but stupid enough to think that she could discover something [about herself] in an interview.’

In keeping with the clandestine nature of the operation, Diana’s private secretary, her press secretary, her family, apparently even her brother and her butler Paul Burrell – who had acted as unwitting go-between – were kept completely in the dark about the interview. Once she had made the decision to go ahead she did not want to be stopped either by her own officials or by Establishment figures inside the BBC. She was particularly concerned that if the BBC Chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, heard about the interview he would contact Buckingham Palace and she would be prevented from telling her story to the world.

Inside Television Centre, once Diana had given Bashir the green light, the editor of
Panorama
, Steve Hewlett, several senior BBC executives and Bashir himself met secretly to structure the
interview. The BBC Director-General at the time, John Birt, was concerned that the questions should be well-phrased, but otherwise he did not interfere. One omitted area of questioning concerned the Princess’s relationship with Will Carling. It was on Bashir’s original list but, according to the then BBC Head of Weekly Current Affairs, Tim Gardam, they felt that as they were already asking about Oliver Hoare and James Hewitt, they did not need to include him – they did not want the interview to be just about her boyfriends. ‘I remember feeling a fool afterwards,’ Gardam later commented ruefully, about omitting Carling.

They all knew, however, that even with the 150 or so questions they had composed they were handling potential dynamite. ‘This could bring down the BBC or the monarchy or both,’ said Richard Ayre, BBC’s Controller of Editorial Policy, only half joking.

On 5 November 1995, Martin Bashir, a cameraman, Tony Poole, and the producer, Mike Robinson, drove into Kensington Palace and were personally greeted by the Princess, who showed them into the boys’ sitting room where the interview took place. In keeping with the intense secrecy surrounding the project, Diana had made sure that all her staff, including Paul Burrell, were off the premises. As it was a Sunday there did not seem to be anything unusual in their being given the day off.

Once the interview was complete, the master tape was copied in a BBC studio in London and put into a bank vault. Then Bashir and his team moved into Brock House, a disused BBC building in central London, to begin editing. After a couple of days, fearing the project could be exposed to prying eyes, they decided to decamp to a hotel in Eastbourne to complete the editing process. As Richard Ayre explained: ‘It may be paranoia but we became increasingly uneasy.’ They hired the Duchess of York Suite, appropriately across the corridor from the Windsor Suite, where they blacked out the windows and continued editing the interview. The watchword was secrecy. When a trio of BBC executives, including Richard Ayre, travelled to Eastbourne to view the finished film, they did so in separate cars and by different routes. Diana’s so-called paranoia was catching. It was worth the journey, though.

Although the Princess had known the question areas in advance, there had been no rehearsals and no arrangements about the kind of replies that would be acceptable to the programme makers and the Princess. As a result, the overall effect was one of breathtaking honesty. ‘Here was a royal talking like a real human being with all the traumas of a real person’s life,’ observed Tony Hall, BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs. ‘I was bowled over by the frankness of it.’

After the film ended, Gardam broke the stunned silence in the BBC studio, commenting, ‘He’ll never be able to marry Camilla now.’ As a piece of film-making it was very clean, the documentary needing only a couple of editorial cuts. One, made later by John Birt, was to protect the sensibilities of Princes William and Harry about unspecified remarks made by Diana, the other was when the Princess would not be drawn into answering Bashir’s questions about the Queen Mother’s role in orchestrating the marriage and the help, or lack of it, she gave when Diana first entered the royal family. While she was critical of the Queen Mother both in private and when contributing to her biography, during the TV interview the Princess was much more circumspect, saying that the Queen Mother had been ‘very busy and did not have much time to help’.

For the Princess, the interview had been the easy part. Now came the difficult bit – speaking to the Queen, who had just returned from an official visit to New Zealand, and other senior royal figures about her secret decision to appear on television. As, at the time, courtiers did not know the full extent of Diana’s close involvement with
Diana: Her True Story
, the
Panorama
programme was ostensibly her first foray into the world of the public confessional. Her only stipulation to the
Panorama
team was that she wanted to tell the Queen herself about what she had done before they announced the programme to an unsuspecting world. The Princess was determined to accept responsibility for her actions, and in mid-November, the week before the programme was broadcast, went to Buckingham Palace, where she saw the Queen’s private secretary Sir Robert Fellowes. According to BBC sources, he asked her innocently if the interview she had given was
an insert for the charity programme,
Children in Need
. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘
Panorama
.’ His one-syllable reply said it all: ‘Oh.’

As soon as the Queen had been informed, Diana telephoned Bashir to let him know that the BBC could now announce the interview. Inside the corporation they had their own difficulties, having been forced to stage their equivalent of a palace coup. The Director-General, John Birt, only told the BBC Chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, as the story was being released to the media – on 14 November, which just happened to be Prince Charles’s forty-seventh birthday. Birt, aware that Diana was ‘terrified’ that Hussey might use his authority inside the BBC and the Palace to gag her, delayed his move for as long as possible in order to forestall any possible intervention. As it was, the programme caused an irreversible rift between the Director-General and the Chairman as well as rupturing relations with Buckingham Palace.

Diana’s own resolve was tested to the full as she refused to divulge any of the contents of the programme either to the Queen and her courtiers, Prince Charles, her own private secretary, Patrick Jephson, and even her divorce lawyer, Lord Mishcon, who had built up a warm paternal relationship with his royal client. Mishcon tried everything from ‘avuncular sympathy to dire legal warning’ to encourage her to reveal all – but without success.

The Princess spent the days before the broadcast bravely assuring her friends and supporters that they would be proud of her, saying over and over, ‘Everything will be all right.’ But behind this apparent confidence she was anxious and uncertain. Just before the broadcast she telephoned Debbie Frank, and in breathless, apprehensive tones told her about the interview. ‘She was terrified before the programme came out,’ Ms Frank recollected.

The Princess had lit the fuse when she sat down with Martin Bashir at Kensington Palace on the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Just two weeks later twenty-three million people tuned into their television sets to watch the resulting explosion.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

The Long Goodbye

W
ITH ITS GREAT LAWNS
, secret walled gardens, sunken ponds, and cobbled courtyards, the Jacobean country house that forms the core of Kensington Palace seems to be many miles away from the hustle and bustle of Kensington High Street just down the road. Certainly the animal life to be found in the grounds – for a time a pair of ‘married’ ducks appeared at Princess Margaret’s doorstep every morning to be fed – adds to its rural feel. The poet Leigh Hunt captured the non-regal character of the seventeenth-century building when he said, ‘Windsor Castle is a place to receive monarchs in, Buckingham Palace to see fashion and Kensington Palace seems a place to drink tea.’ However, the first thing new members of staff learn is that the assorted dukes, duchesses, princes and princesses who inhabit what Edward VII once called ‘the aunt heap’ are rarely minded to drop in on one another for afternoon tea; communication between royal neighbours tends rather to be carried on through memos between private secretaries. In all the time that Diana lived at Kensington Palace she never entertained her neighbours, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.