British journalist Andy Webb reveals his view of the BBC’s Panorama interview with Diana

A BBC insider has revealed the shocking web of deception and cover-up surrounding the late Princess Diana and her death. SEE THE VIDEO

Exclusive: The late Princess Diana would be alive today if it wasn’t for the scandalous cover-up by the BBC surrounding disgraced reporter Martin Bashir’s infamous interview with her 30 years ago, British journalist Andy Webb believes.

Webb has spent the past two decades working to expose the web of lies woven by Bashir to lure the late princess into doing a 55-minute sit-down interview with him in her sitting room at Kensington Palace in 1995 that ultimately destroyed her life.

Webb, who worked at the BBC for 15 years, said Bashir “grooms her, gaslights her and terrifies her” into doing a world exclusive interview with him to “say certain things”.

“Diana would be 64 years old, she’s got her five grandchildren and for her family it’s that knowledge, if the BBC had done what they clearly should have done, even on that basis of the simple duty of care to notifying on what had happened (with the interview) her life would have followed a different course,” Webb told this masthead who spoke with him at his home in west London.

Princess Diana during her 1995 interview with Martin Bashir. Picture: BBC

“If Bashir hadn’t done what Bashir did things would have been very very different, of course they would.

“What his bosses knew quite quickly was that Bashir had commissioned forged documents, they knew that he had passed these documents off as real and they knew Bashir had lied about what he had done three times when asked about it”.

Webb said that if the BBC investigated thoroughly at the time what had happened and told the late Princess, “Diana’s family, her brother (Earl Spencer), in particular, is firmly of the view that her life would not have followed the disastrous course which it did follow”.

Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana in Kensington Palace for the television program Panorama. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

“As a result of the lies Bashir told, Diana got rid of the people around her whom she trusted, whom had her best interests at heart, most important of all her private secretary Patrick Jephson,” Webb said.

Bashir compiled a shopping list of outrageous claims to convince the late princess to speak out after he falsely told her that her then husband, Prince Charles, had plotted to have both her and Camilla Parker-Bowles – now the Queen, murdered.

But the lies didn’t stop there, Bashir, convinced Diana her husband was having an affair with their children’s nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who had an abortion and Bashir had faked documents to show it happened. It wasn’t true.

The wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981.

The rogue journalist also bizarrely claimed Queen Elizabeth II was also going to abdicate within six months and her son, Prince William who was 13 at the time, was supposedly wearing a James Bond-style watch that was recording all his mother’s conversations.

And he claimed those around her were spying on her and divulging information to the press which made her lose trust in those closest to her.

Webb, a British journalist and award-winning filmmaker, this month released a new book titled ‘Dianarama, The Betrayal of Princess Diana’, that goes into detail about the scandal surrounding the interview that Prince William declared in 2021 had “no legitimacy” and should “never be aired again”.

Webb said the long list of lies Bashir spun was enough to convince Diana that she had no choice but to speak out and tell Buckingham Palace she was not going anywhere and Prince Charles was not fit to be king.

Prince Charles, the late Princess Diana and their children William and Harry at the commemorations of VJ Day on August 19, 1995.

One of the most damning lines from the explosive interview that aired on November 20, 1995, was the claim by the late princess that there, “there were three of us in the marriage”, referring to Queen Camilla.

Webb said after the interview that was aired around the world and watched by tens of millions of people it led Princess Diana on a treacherous path that ultimately resulted in her death in a Paris tunnel 21 months later.

In 2021 a six-month investigation by Lord Dyson determined that the interview was secured by deception and an investigation held in 1996 into the matter was “flawed and woefully ineffective”.

Bashir publicly apologised for his conduct in securing the Princess Diana interview after the Dyson Inquiry was published in 2021. 

The late Diana Princess of Wales wearing a Christian Lacroix red dress in 1995.

The late Diana, Princess of Wales, talking during the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute fund raising dinner in Sydney.

In his book, Webb delved into the scandal involving Bashir, a little known journalist who he said was “not a household name in his own household, that’s how unknown he was”.

“People chasing Diana at that point included, even 30 years ago, a younger Oprah Winfrey … Barbara Walters who was then the doyen of the A-list interview, David Frost people like that,” he said.

“As a result of the lies Bashir told Diana got rid of the people around her whom she trusted who had her best interests at heart, most important of all her private secretary Patrick Jephson, he’s gone within weeks of the Panorama interview, she gets rid of her chauffeur”.

Webb said what Bashir did to Diana was so incredibly cruel.

Video surveillance footage of the late Diana, Princess of Waleswith partner Dodi Al Fayed in lift of Ritz Hotel on the night they were killed in road accident in Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris, France in 1997.

“He grooms her, he gaslights her, he terrifies her and you can even say you get to coercive control because what he wanted her to do was sit in front of the Panorama TV camera,” he said.

“What happened to Diana is so lurid, so amazingly cruel yet it is also kind of fascinating.

“When you look at the scandalous stuff, the betrayals, the murder plots, all of this stuff, I just know that this is truly, truly historical”.

Front pages of the London newspaper on November 15, 1995 shows how Britain's late Princess Diana of Wales opened up a controversy surrounding her decision to give a TV interview on the BBC without informing the Queen. Picture: AFP

Webb said the reason he never gave up on pursuing the scandal covered up by the BBC was because he kept “getting brushoffs and told things that were patently untrue by the BBC”.

When he first began working on it in 2007 and put questions to the BBC regarding the scandal he said the public broadcaster “just lied to me in black and white”.

“I was asking them to send to me any documents they had regarding an investigation that had taken place into Martin Bashir back in the day and the answer came back, ‘there are no such documents”,” Webb said.

“Unlike any other story that I’ve covered over my career. I’ve covered wars and bombs have gone off, oil tankers have crashed and I’ve interviewed literally kings and queens, there is no other story that I’ve covered that I know for a fact people will be discussing in 500 years time”.

Originally published as British journalist Andy Webb reveals his view of the BBC’s Panorama interview with Diana