her poor choice of forgoing the security that she was allowed as a former royal.
A few weeks ago, the truth about the Martin Bashir interview came pouring out, and it turned out that he had dripped terrible and poisonous lies into Diana's ears. They included that her mail was being intercepted, that her phones and car were tapped and bugged, that Prince William had been given a watch by Charles that contained a listening device....on and on. (For interest, I cut and pasted a list of the lies below from The Times.)
You might think that she should have just dismissed it all as crazy talk, but Bashir was not only an accredited journalist, he was from the BBC. And not only from the BBC, but from its flagship current affairs show. Earl Spencer called the BBC and spoke to the editor of the show (Panorama) about Bashir, who told Spencer that Bashir was one of his best journalists. With a recommendation like that, from a BBC show like that, it's not surprising, imo, that she took the lies seriously.
And they were a large factor in her getting rid of her royal security, because as she said at the time, she didn't want to be spied on. I remember thinking at the time that this seemed unnecessarily paranoid, but now we know why she thought that way. So there's quite a backstory to that choice, and it's more understandable now that it seemed previously, I think.
Check out the list of Bashir lies below! Remember that this journalist was from one of the most respected current affairs shows on one of the world's most respected media outlets. Simply unbelievable that he would do this. (Source: The Times, Friday May 21 2021, "The Litany of Lies that Convinced Diana to Give an Interview," David Brown.)
Bashir, Diana and Spencer met in London, September 19, 1995
Spencer’s handwritten notes of the meeting record 32 “lies” told by Bashir.
1 Diana’s private correspondence had been intercepted for the previous six months.
2 A tracking device had been fitted to her car. Diana had been followed by security services twice in the past week.
3 Three telephone lines in Kensington Palace were tapped and there was a bug on her car phone.
4 Her bodyguard was plotting against her.
5 Aylard had received tapes of secretly recorded royal conversations during a meeting.
6 MI6 agents said that Aylard “orchestrates everything” and that he had “commissioned” Ken Wharfe, who had resigned as the princess’s senior protection officer two years earlier.
7 MI6 had taped Charles and Aylard saying that they were now “in end game” and Diana had told Aylard “that she wouldn’t divorce”.
8 Claim that “Charles was longing for Diana to initiate divorce” and to “go off to America”.
9 Aylard had been “paid by Jonathan Dimbleby”, who had made a 1994 documentary about Charles in which the prince admitted being unfaithful with Camilla Parker Bowles.
10 Jephson had “business connections” with Aylard.
11 Aylard planted news stories worth £250,000 the previous year.
12 Jephson was taking flying lessons in Jersey and Aylard was “from the Channel Islands”.
13 The princess’s driver, Steve Davies, had been “feeding” the Today newspaper.
14 A reporter who had often written stories about Spencer was known to use prostitutes in the Langham Hilton, in central London.
15 Described a “very close relationship” between the editor and columnist of another newspaper.
16 A Fleet Street figure was a paedophile who had “abused children in a Greenwich children’s home”.
17 A female journalist was in a relationship with one of Spencer’s former Althorp employees.
18 Richard Kay, a Daily Mail journalist close to Diana, paid informants at the Chelsea Harbour Club where she worked out.
19 Kay was having an affair with the former wife of one of Charles’s closest friends. Kay had set up three shell companies, implying they were used for tax evasion.
20 Kay was used by Aylard as “a friendly journalist” to obtain information about Diana.
21 Michael Fawcett, Charles’s valet, had pushed someone to sell a story to the News of the World.
22 Two years earlier there had been a decision to “reinvent” the Prince of Wales and a year ago it was “decided to attack Diana (and family)”. Charles had vowed he “would not rest until Victoria was six feet under”, an apparent reference to Spencer’s first wife, the former Victoria Lockwood.
23 Controversy over Diana’s closeness to Will Carling, the newly married England rugby captain, had been “fed” by his wife, Julia.
24 Parker Bowles was “depressed” and publicity about Diana and Carling had been deliberately leaked because Charles was on a two-week holiday with Tiggy Legge-Bourke, nanny to Prince William and Prince Harry.
25 The decline in Diana’s relationship with William was “because of Tiggy”. Charles was “in love” with Legge-Bourke, who had either miscarried a baby or had an abortion.
26 Three of the princess’s closest female friends, Julia Samuel, Katie Menzies and Catherine Soames, might be leaking stories about Diana.
27 Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire businessman whose wife, Lady (Annabel) Goldsmith, was a friend of the princess, had told Dimbleby that “Diana’s had it”.
28 The Duke of Edinburgh “doesn’t like Diana at all”. He had sent “very unpleasant correspondence” about Diana.
29 The Earl of Wessex was receiving treatment for Aids at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
30 The Queen was “very ill with heart problems” and was “a comfort eater”.
31 A member of Charles’s private staff was moonlighting at the St James’s outfitters Turnbull and Asser and had a reputation as “a bully”.
32 Prince William, then 13, had been given a watch by his father that contained a listening device.
Prince William
How interesting, Alybetter! Stood out like sore thumbs, lol! What took you across the pond, and how long were you there? And what's in Newmarket that you spent a lot of time there? I wanna say horses, for some reason.
I think its also sad Kate and the Cambridge kids might not be going to Diana's statute unveiling because M won't be there
Especially when you would think its a time Diana would have liked all her family to be there together
I really wonder if the whole big falling-out between the Cambridges and Sussexes might not have happened if Diana was here to soothe the troubled waters.
It’s been reported today that being ‘cut off financially’ didn’t include the 4.45 million GBP Charles gave them when they left
It’s been reported today that being ‘cut off financially’ didn’t include the 4.45 million GBP Charles gave them when they left
I think he was born in 1984 @Daisys and Diamonds, so he’ll be 37 this year.
I think he was born in 1984 @Daisys and Diamonds, so he’ll be 37 this year.