‘LETHAL Consequences’ Bombshell Claims Link BBC Interview To Diana Death

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0:42The consequences of the interview were lethal. We looked at the Diana interview and the Michael Jackson interview as examples of what a superstar journalist he was. Truly, we can't trust any media. Here's the BBC swooping in to confirm that narrative. I like this idea, this message that she's sending out about being perfectly imperfect.

1:06Piers Morgan:She also says in an interview, I like the community of work and the connection. I think a lot of it is in my DNA. This is the same Duchess of Sussex who makes hundreds of millions of dollars trading off her royal status without doing anything for it. Meghan Markle's been forced to deny reports that she stole a$1 ,700 dress The sensational claims have been completely overshadowed by the dismal reviews for her new Christmas special on Netflix. And on the subject of disgraced former royals, the Prime Minister says that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should testify in the US about Jeffrey Epstein. So, I'm going to discuss with my world panel.

1:43Piers Morgan:We begin with a book that's making a lot of headlines around the world. It's 30 years since the BBC televised its infamous interview with Princess Diana. Andy Webb's new book, Dianarama, claims it may ultimately have led to her death. Well, welcome to all of you. Andy, it's an amazing book. You were the first person to break this story, centring on the former Panorama reporter Martin Bachir, who, of course, secured the infamous, famous... one of the most famous interviews in history with Dinah in 1995. I remember it very well. I was editing the Daily Mirror at the time. It was a bombshell. But it wasn't what it seemed.

2:25Piers Morgan:And the reason for that, which is the cornerstone of your book, is that Bashir faked bank statements, which he showed to Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, to try and persuade him of his credentials and who was working against his sister, suggesting that people close to Princess were being paid by the security services, embellished other stuff involving other members of her team. And ultimately, it was that that led her to do the interview. and the reason why people say that may have led to the circumstances of her death within two years is it started the spiral of her exit, really, from royal protection and everything that went with it, which was largely down to the lack of trust that she had with people from the royal household and people that worked for them.

3:11Piers Morgan:So this was an incredibly consequential interview and, as your book establishes, an incredibly consequential and disgraceful stitch-up by Martin Bashir. Have I categorised this correctly, would you say? Yeah, very much so. Except I might not even go as far as to call it an interview. An interview suggests, you know, somebody sitting there legitimately seeking information. It wasn't that. It was because of the plan that Martin Bashir had come with. It was effectively a performance, you know, a double act that poor old Princess Diana found herself taking part in and she didn't realise. So, yes, your summary is quite right, but as I say, let's think of it that way.

3:54Let's think of it that way. It wasn't a genuine, you know, interview like that. How did you first get to hear that there were serious question marks

4:04Piers Morgan:about what Bashir had done here? Well, I was working at the BBC for 20 years. When Bashir was doing his thing, my desk was probably about 100 feet away in 1995 in the White City building. Now, at that point, I didn't have any idea whatsoever. But really quite sooner, you know what organisations are like in the corridors. Especially the BBC. Absolutely, especially the BBC. The bad smell that began to permeate the building over this interview was really quite pronounced. And that, you know, I've kind of wondered, one thing, and we would get on this far, but Samir Shah, who we hear about a lot of them, currently chairman of the BBC, At the time this all went down, he was kind of number three in the pecking order.

4:51We have John Burt, we have Tony Horne, the Semi-A Shah. Now, I don't know how much Mr Shah knew about the awful things that had gone on, but there were many, many people in the BBC who knew something really bad had happened.

5:03Piers Morgan:Is it conceivable that the current BBC chairman knew nothing about what had gone down? I think if he did know nothing about what had gone down, it would be most odd, because a lot of other people knew about stuff. As I say, I can't sit here and make allegations about Maximilien Shah, but I'm just saying... It's very interesting that he was number three at the time. Number three. And he's now chairman. I mean, just overseen the removal of the director general and the head of news over, you know, the scandal involving the incorrect editing of a Trump speech. But interesting that the man that pulled the trigger on their departure is, at the very least, part of the executive team.

5:44Piers Morgan:when this was all happening. I can say this year, in the book, there's only a couple of times where I go off the record. One of them was this, that at this moment, an extremely senior and knowledgeable member of the broadcasting community, about a year ago, 18 months ago, went to Samir Shah and said, look, you have got to get your arms around the Diana Gate scandal, if you like. You've got to do this. but he hasn't. He ignored it. Fascinating. The book contains a lot of revelations but obviously the most significant person in all this is Bashir himself. He was the religious affairs correspondent.

6:25Piers Morgan:This was a guy supposedly kind of purer than pure, even by BBC standards. Was he always a rogue, do you think? I mean, was this just in his DNA or did he just pick on this big things he wanted the prize of the interview? I mean, Piers, you know, you've been a senior editor. I've been a journalist for decades, too. Sometimes, unfortunately, there are rogues. And they go too far and they act, you know, they have no moral compass if you're like, Martin Bashir was one of those. To me, the really important issue here, and always has been, it wasn't so much the terrible things that Bashir did vis -à-vis Diana.

7:06Diana, that was really, really terrible. But Diana had been through scrapes before. There was Squidjugate, there was Oliver Hoare, etc. The key moment for me in this is the moment when BBC bosses, the grown-ups, the people with the moral compass, if you like, when they knew what they knew and they could have gone to Diana and briefed her on what they knew and if they had, very, very plausibly, her life would have followed a different course, not towards Paris.

7:36Piers Morgan:And the really damaging thing about this was the terrible, broken trust it created with some of the people closest to Diana. Absolutely. Patrick Jefferson. Well, Patrick Jefferson, who was her private secretary, is a ranner. I mean, I knew him well. He was talking about this when he was talking about your book last week. And, you know, it really fractured their relationship because she couldn't trust it, because she had been shown documents purporting to suggest that Patrick Jefferson had been paid... That's right. £40 ,000. Yeah,£40 ,000. Back in the 90s, that's maybe$100 ,000 plus now for information about his boss.

8:12Piers Morgan:And if you're Diana, you're already pretty paranoid about the media, as she was. You know, I knew her pretty well, actually, by the time she died, and I had lunch with her and talked to her quite a lot about stuff, and she just had a raging paranoia about the media, with good reason. Everyone was trying to get a piece of this superstar, But he, Bashir, was concocting through these fake documents a whole sense that almost everyone around her couldn't be trusted. So that only he could be trusted, so that that's why she should do the interview. That was really his modus operandi. Absolutely. And in the words of Charles Spencer, her brother, you know, he's helped me very much, worked me closely on the book.

8:50And I put the question to him, you know, how broad, how strong, how real is that line from panorama to Paris? And he answers very, very responsibly and calmly and ends by saying, do you know what, the consequences of the interview were lethal. Because when what happened, what you described happened, happened, she got Patrick Jefferson out, her chauffeur out. The doubts and worries that she already had about the sort of the formal protective security mechanism, gone. So there, a little over 18 months later, she's in Paris, the car's been driven by a guy who's drunk, has he had drugs, whatever he's done, he's speeding, and she dies.

9:29Now, if you are Prince William, and you think that there's even only a 30, 40 % chance, 40 % chance that his mum would not have been there if the BBC had done what they should have... Forget she's a princess. Do you not have a duty of care to a member of the public who you know has been shown and forged documents by somebody who you know is a serial liar. So you don't have to be Charles Spencer or indeed Diana. You just have to be a member of the public and you have that duty of care to brief them. They didn't do it.

10:04Piers Morgan:So does Earl Spencer inherently believe that it was only... It was within two years that Diana was dead. Does he believe that there is, as you put it, this direct line, pretty much that she probably, probably on balance, wouldn't have died in that underpass in Paris if it hadn't been for the events that were catalyzed by this interview. Mando deodorant is a game-changer. I've been using it and I won't go back. Total freshness for up to 72 hours and the scents are exceptional. Bourbon leather is an instant classic. Clean and bold. It's safe anywhere on the body. It's baking soda-free and it's ideal for after the gin.

10:45Piers Morgan:Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice, and free shipping. As a special offer for you, new customers get 20 % off site-wide with our exclusive code. Use code PIERS, P-I-E-R-S, at shopmando.com for 20 % off site-wide and free shipping. Shopmando.com. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Mando has got you covered. I'd put it that he has a horrible suspicion that she might not have died. Because would she have been there with Dodie Fayed if Patrick, in particular, and Charles Spencer says specifically Patrick was the person he said dying.

11:31She could be mercurial, she could be emotional, she could be difficult in the circumstances. If Patrick had still been on the scene, he can't see a world in which his sister would have been where she was. And then there's the practicalities, just like the chauffeur is security, etc, etc. But it's the fact that that is plausible at all. You can imagine how heartbreaking that is.

11:54Piers Morgan:Well, there's also, I mean, there's a stunning revelation which reminded me of something that happened when I was editor of The Mirror, which was based on this, actually. You reveal that Bashir told Diana that Prince Charles, as he was then, the king now, is trying to have her killed. First of all, just tell me about that. Well, we know this from a three-way meeting. It was actually September 19, 1995. It's actually the first time that Bashir actually meets Diana. Three-way meeting herself, Bashir and Charles Spencer. And at this meeting, most extraordinary things came out. As you say, yes, Prince Charles wants to have Diana and Camilla killed, both of them killed.

12:38Why? Because he's pursuing an affair, all nonsense, of course. He's pursuing an affair with the nanny, Tiggy-leg Burke. People may remember the name. And so he wants them to be taken out so that he can marry her. In that same meeting, stories like Prince Edward, then unmarried, has AIDS, and he is being treated at the Royal Marston Hospital. Prince William has been given a James Bond watch that can bug conversations in the room. Extraordinary range of... And the purpose of this again was what? The purpose of this was to... And one other thing, that the Queen was going to abdicate in six months' time.

13:22So the purpose of it was this, to sort of fill Diana... to terrify her. And then what happens? You're terrified. I'm Martin Boucher. How can I get you out of this, Diana? I tell you what's going to happen. You're going to go on Panorama. You're not going to tell them all the stuff you know about the death plots. You're going to do two things. You're going to show Buckingham Palace that you're tough and you're not going to go anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. And at the end of the interview, which is exactly what she does, She throws a massive question mark over Charles' suitability to take the throne.

13:56She did. So Diana has been assured that the Queen is going to abdicate April 96. If the panorama plan, if you like, carries through, what do you have? Well, you have Charles takes the hint and goes off to Highgrove and does organic gardening or whatever he does. William takes the throne. In that scenario, Diana is the mother of the new king. Now, that is not a bad place to be.

14:29Piers Morgan:Yeah, she becomes a kind of queen, regent, consul, whatever they want to call it. A new queen mother. But that is what Panorama was all about. That's what that was about. And we know, you might say, well, how do you know this? We know this because seven days before the Panorama interview was recorded, Diana gave what Patrick Jefferson describes to me as he describes it, was her last will and testament. He said if she washed up in the Thames one morning, dead people would know. I'll keep this as quick as I can, but Diana dictated to her lawyer, Lord Michicon, exactly how she saw things. Queen's going to abdicate murder plot Meekah Miller, Tiggy Lugberg, she said, had actually had an abortion.

15:13That's right. I remember all of this.

15:15Piers Morgan:And I remember we had a story at the Mirror, which contained a copy of a letter Diana had written, in which she said, I think Charles is planning to have me killed in a car accident. And obviously it was complete nonsense, but it was actually this idea had been fed to her, it turned out, by Martin Bashir. We didn't know that when we published that story. So fascinating for me to see that that was the genesis of why she believed these wild things that were going on. Let me bring in the other panel members now. We're joined by Royal Commentator Katie Nicholl, historian and Royal Author Tessa Dunlop, and from Los Angeles, the host of the Kinsey Schofield, unfiltered Kinsey Schofield.

15:55Piers Morgan:Welcome to all of you. OK, Tessa, this is pretty... I mean, it's pretty shocking and kind of very relevant, because we're right in the middle of another Panorama scandal. And for American viewers in particular, Panorama is like 60 Minutes. It's the flagship political current affairs show of the BBC, the taxpayer-funded corporation. And so this is really shocking that 30 years ago, this incredible interview turned out to have been orchestrated by a guy literally having fake documents created to spin lies that all the key people around Diana were betraying her, which then drove her away from them all and into the path of Dodi Fayed and then into the path of the Paris underpath and her death.

16:43It is devastating. And I speak of someone, and Katie too, young women at the time, and we looked at Diana in that interview as someone talking truth to power. Right. She was the original woman who was nailing her colours to the mask and socking one to the establishment, and all the time she was being manipulated. But to bring it right up to date, my question for you, and full marks, by the way, for the extraordinary thorough way in which you've chased this down, because I've taken legal proceedings against the Beeb and I know they're Kafkaesque. I mean, it's really hardcore. But I want to understand, Prince William stands and he says that worse than this rogue reporter, Martin Bashir, is the great sadness that the BBC leaders looked the other way.

17:27I get the feeling that you think, unlike Lord Dyson, Lord Dyson referred to sort of woefully inadequate management, but that you think it's worse than that. It's almost deliberate on the part of the management that no-one was held to account earlier. Can you stack that up for me? Why do you think that's the case? Well, can I stack it up for you? William. No, William talks about leaders looking... BBC looking the other way, they're busy, oh, shut up. No, no, no. The key thing is what William very carefully said, and I will say, you know, the book has not been written sort of in isolation, if you like.

18:03I don't know where I speak here. What William said very carefully was that leaders at the BBC who looked the other way, it wasn't that they looked the right way and their vision was unfortunately clouded. They looked the other way. But are you accusing the BBC of deliberate deception? I think that's what I want to understand. I'm accusing the BBC of no more than William accused of looking, knowingly, willfully looking the other way when they should have looked someone else. The parallels to me with what's happened with this Trump speech

18:29Piers Morgan:thing are quite similar in the sense that they knew, right, a year ago what had happened. And then there was just this elaborate, long cover-up and attempt to stop people really finding out the truth. And again, here, a much longer period of people knowing what had gone down or certainly seriously suspecting it, but not taking the appropriate action to bring Bashir to proper account. Because this only came out... When was it all blown out of the water? 2020. 20. Right, so you're talking about, you know, this is 25 years later. I think what I'm trying to understand is, in a world where there's so much disinformation and you can pick and choose whatever you listen to and you don't know whether to believe it, I like waking up in the morning and believing what I hear in the BBC.

19:15And what I think I'm trying to establish is, was this just because the BBC is ridiculously enormous, their management, you know, took the foot off the pedal, nobody held Martin Bashir to account, time moved on and it kind of got lost in the weeds? Or was there something more mendacious than that? Oh, no, sorry, if you're saying was there intent here? Yes. My view is absolutely there was intent. Because, I mean, unlike what they'll call Trumpgate, had Martin Bashir been publicly nailed in 1996, shame for Martin Bashir, but a bigger shame still for the bosses who would have been out of the door in 30 minutes.

19:49Well, let me bring Kinsey in,

19:50Piers Morgan:because Martin Bashir ended up going to the United States and anchoring a show over there for NBC, I think it was. and he did that for a few years. He was a big celebrated television superstar off the back of this interview and one he did with Michael Jackson, which also has a lot of question marks about how he acquired that. What do you make of this? And in particular, obviously, there's a lot of debate happening in America about the BBC, about Panorama, because of Donald Trump now suing for a billion dollars over this editing of his January 6th speech to make it look like he actively incited the violence.

20:28Piers Morgan:What is the reaction in the United States to this? The reaction in the United States is specifically around the Trump scenario. Truly, we can't trust any media. You know, fake news, I think, started over here during the 2015-2016 campaign where Donald Trump would stand up during his campaign events and say, you can't trust the media. and here's the BBC swooping in to confirm that narrative that he started over a decade ago. Martin Bashir, you're absolutely right, came over to the United States and was a superstar. He was a unique character. And we looked at him, we looked at the Diana interview and the Michael Jackson interview as, you know, examples of what a superstar journalist he was.

21:16So we have been disappointed to learn how he secured that interview with Princess Diana over the last few years. And, you know, I am frustrated when I reread some of Prince William's words in this book and how passionate and devastated he was over the deception. And then to see Prince Harry turn in May 2025 and sit down with the BBC to talk to them about his security issues. To me, it's a lack of loyalty to his deceased mother.

21:46Piers Morgan:Yeah, I mean, look, Katie, I'm a big fan of the BBC for all its faults. Yeah, me too, by the way. I love waking up and listening to the Today programme. It's a great institution. Right, and it's kind of a unique institution where we pay for it, right? Whether that business model can sustain to the younger generation, I think, is a different argument. I think they kind of have to wake up and realise young people will not pay the licence fee, and that's going to be a different question. But, you know, there's so much great about the BBC, but the Trump thing was a massively self-harming thing that happened, which put it on the world stage.

22:19Piers Morgan:But this, to me, was way more insidious. This was way more deceptive, way more deliberate, way more planned. Because of what Andy was saying, because they knew what was going on and even when they knew, they didn't then intervene when they could have done and said, there has been an epic cock-up essentially here. We've got this wrong and we're sorry. And I think when you reread those comments, as Kinsey was saying from William and also from Harry, I mean, listen, I don't agree with her in that he shouldn't have given an interview to the BBC. I actually think it's right that they move on. this is our public broadcaster and he could give the interview to them.

22:51Piers Morgan:Yeah, I mean, they covered his wedding, for example, right? They are the national broadcaster for the beginning. Absolutely. But when you hear them talk about the, you know, the huge traumatic impact it's had on them, and, of course, for those boys, even as men now and fathers themselves, to know that something like this could have changed their course of history and fate, I think is, you know, is really challenging. And, of course, you know, for us as broadcasters, it plays into that self-doubt, duplicitous news gathering, deceit, all of the things that are not helpful from our position and, frankly, should have been dealt with a long time ago.