News about Martin Bashir

It was the honeymoon photos (left) of the new Princess of Wales that clinched it for me to join Camp Diana, writes LIZ JONES. I'd always disliked the Royal Family , what with their ethos of hunting, shooting and fishing. The bear skin hats worn for ceremonial duties. Their love of horse racing and polo. Fly fishing! But the sight of Diana at Balmoral, clearly itchy in scratchy, dowdy tweed, trying to mask her boredom, made the animal lovers among us cheer her to the rafters. When Camilla finally married Charles (middle, 2005), the man she had always been in love with, I was unconvinced, unexcited. I only really started to thaw towards Camilla, drip by drip, after Queen Elizabeth died. When Charles was diagnosed with cancer , she didn't sit by his bed stroking his hand, she dusted herself off and got on with it, working hard, with a smile on her face. And Camilla's decision this week shows how she is listening to what the ordinary British public want. Charles clearly takes note of her advice. I like to imagine her whispering in his ear, gently persuading and guiding. So, Camp Camilla it is. I cannot wait to see what long-held tradition will meet a sticky end next.

Mr Davies served as Diana's chauffeur at the time of her interview with Martin Bashir in November 1995 but was sacked without explanation in March 1996. He took legal action against the BBC after an investigation into the interview in 2021 revealed a document from a meeting in September 1995 where Panorama sought to procure the interview. The document stated that Diana and Earl Spencer were told by Mr Bashir that Mr Davies 'feeds Today newspaper... change your chauffeur'. Mr Davies' solicitors, Carter-Ruck, said a hearing on Tuesday was told that after he took legal action, the BBC accepted that the 'serious and unfounded allegation' was 'fabricated' and that it had agreed to pay a 'sum of compensation' and his legal costs.

Echoes of the past were everywhere. An estranged royal waving to cheering fans, while on the other side of town the reserved applause appropriate for a dignified palace garden party. For a moment it was like throwing a switch back to the 1990s when for five brutal years, support for the House of Windsor oscillated between those backing Princess Diana and those standing with Prince Charles and the rest of the Royal Family. It is not quite a re-run of the poisonous 'War of the Waleses'. How could it be? But there was something eerily familiar - and profoundly sad - as two rival royal camps staked out their ground this week.

The royal couple's five-day trip to Nigeria was one remembered for their largely separate engagements and their few awkward joint appearances. However, when the then Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales arrived in Lagos on March 15, 1990, thousands of fans welcomed them with cheers and flags. Diana looked resplendent in a series of dresses by designers Catherine Walker and Paul Costelloe as she characteristically attracted much of the limelight. She displayed the kindness that she was so loved for when she held the hand of a leprosy patient at a hospital, as Charles initially stood awkwardly by her side. At the time, the couple's marriage troubles were not public knowledge, but they were both engaged in secret affairs. Charles was seeing Camilla, now the Queen, and Diana was romantically involved with James Hewitt, a Captain in the British Army. She had also had a fling with her protection officer, Barry Mannakee.

For a news anchor generally regarded as the pre-eminent talent of his generation, it was a brutal 55-word goodbye from his employers. 'Huw Edwards has today resigned and left the BBC . After 40 years of service, Huw has explained that his decision was made on the basis of medical advice from his doctors. 'The BBC has accepted his resignation which it believes will allow all parties to move forward. We don't believe it appropriate to comment further.' And that was it. Not a solitary word of regret from the Beeb about his leaving, and no tribute paid to the skills which allowed Edwards to present numerous live events - including the death of the Queen - with such authority, for so long.

The note (pictured) is dated April 25, 1988 and is hand-written on Kensington Palace paper in black ink. The family of the letter's recipient, Lance Corporal Jones, put it up for auction with John Nicholson's Auctioneers and it sold on April 10. Diana had told him her sons were 'thrilled' with their soldier outfits, and that she even had 'great difficulty in removing their kit for such things as bathtime'.

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: The BBC seems to be keen on avoiding Martin Bashir's Panorama interview with Princess Diana next year, having turned down two unsupervised drama treatments of the subject. Does it fear it's impossible to touch without provoking Prince William's ire? William wrote: 'It is my deepest belief that this Panorama programme has no legitimacy and should never be broadcast again' following Lord Dyson's review into Bashir's methods in 2021.'

According to reports, the Duke of Sussex has distanced himself from his British relationships, some of whom go back to his childhood. As he settles into life in the United States, Khashoggi wrote about Prince Harry's constant departure from his British roots on last week. 'I hear he doesn't speak to any of his old friends, and he doesn't listen to any of his old advisors, particularly Tiggy [Legge-Bourke] who used to be very helpful to him, but she's just not around anymore.'

Prince William, as it is often said, has come a long way. The 'Party Prince' of yesteryear has been replaced by a loving father who seldom fails to cut a dignified and often amusing figure in public. The Prince of Wales, who is 41, is not only a key figure in the monarchy but also a public servant. The outlook hasn't always been so sunny, as author Robert Lacey explains in his best-selling biography, Battle of Brothers. Storms were all too common.

Mr Hewitt, a former Household Cavalry officer who had a five-year relationship with the Princess of Wales between 1986 and 1991, wrote to him in 64 letters. According to reports, a wealthy collector has gathered up the notes, which has been described as the 'final insult' to the late princess's memory, who was killed in a car crash in August 1997. Mr Hewitt, 65, is said to have first written the letters, penned between 1989 and 1991, as collateral for a £500,000 loan. The Sun announced today that intermediaries acting on his behalf contacted London auction house Bonhams last October with the intention of selling the collection.

Kathryn Flett, a UK writer, reviews Breathtaking, ITV's enthralling three-parter about the Covid crisis. Although the performance is affecting, she wonders if anyone's excited to revisit 2020.

Rules from the Pandemic Period, which was demonstrated in tonight's 9 p.m. episode of Breathtaking, have barred doctors from administering CPR in certain trusts without having adequate PPE. The guy was untreated for 20 minutes in the back of an ambulance when he arrived at the hospital as a result of the red tape. Dr. Abbey Henderson, played by Downton Abbey actress Joanna Froggatt, fights back tears as she says the patient is dead before walking back to her Covid ward as an acute medicine specialist. According to the writers of ITV's new masterpiece, their creation, which was based on real experiences of frontline medics, could spark the same national outcry as Mr Bates vs. The Post Office

INGRID SEWARD: I was immediately transported back decades to a reception he held for the media in Washington, DC, when news broke of King Charles's cancer diagnosis. One reporter asked how he felt about the dangers of being a public figure in a rapidly changing world for reasons that were lost in the dim and distant past. I have never forgotten Charles' words. He said he had always believed that if a bullet had his name on it, he would be able to handle it. And as a result, I have no doubt that he would have reported that he has cancer with the same enthusiasm. However, although there is no evidence that his illness is life-threatening, he would not be human if the mention of this condition did not evoke feelings of fear. After all, monarchs are just as vulnerable to death intimations as their subjects.

The Mail on Sunday revealed that the paper, which has been buried in BBC archives for three decades, was delivered to then-director general John Birt four days before the 1995 broadcast. It was written at a time when the Palace and the BBC were at a point of profound tension. Diana had told royal aides that she had given Bashir an exclusive interview about the breakdown of her marriage to Prince Charles just days before. The letter, which is thought to have arrived from the Queen's office, was discovered in 10,000 pages of heavily redacted documents that were eventually published by the BBC last week. It came after a long-running fight between the corporation and investigative journalist Andy Webb over emails between BBC bosses when Bashir's deceit became apparent in 2020.

ANDY WEBB: The Bashir affair in the BBC is full of unanswered questions. "Who's watching what the BBC bosses are up to?" is one of the most notable questions. When a private business goes off the rails, the shareholders can march in and request a halt. The board is the closest we'll get to that with the BBC. This committee has 14 members, four of whom are the corporation's topmost executives, with the remainder being strangers. Academics, bankers, attorneys, and media personalities are among the academics, bankers, and journalists who have weighed in. Three knights, one a dame, are princesses, and their job is to keep the executives accountable. So what do these outsiders make of the fact that board member, BBC director-general Tim Davie , has spent more than £150,000 to keep 3,000 documents linked to Martin Bashir 's infamous interview with Princess Diana under wraps?

PLATELL'S PEOPLE: The time my husband told me he'd been having an affair with a coworker is still fresh in my memory all these decades. He pleaded with him, sobbing that she'meant nothing' to him and that he loved me. The child was pregnant before revealing that she was pregnant. I can recall every detail; the time and place - late evening in our tiny kitchen; what we were eating - spaghetti Bolognese, his all favorite, with extra Parmesan. We'd only been married for four years. It's impossible to express how much it affected me. I simply could not excuse him. My heart had been struck by a million daggers. My life has never been the same since I was born.

According to recently published papers, BBC executives joked that the Martin Bashir (left) affair would see them suspended for a 'ten-year term in the Tower'. Senior executives in previously unseen internal communications joked that the bombshell 1995 Panorama interview (right) with Diana, Princess of Wales, would cost them knighthoods. Their 'unguarded' conversations bore the subject heading 'Hussy [sic]/Panorama,' and came after Lady Susan Hussey, the late Queen's lady-in-waiting, emailed the BBC over the matter. The emails were part of a trove of 10,000 pages of documents relating to Diana's 'There were three of us in this marriage' that were later revealed by the corporation. Lady Susan's interview was so controversial that even BBC's then-chairman Lord Hussey was kept in the dark in the case he told his wife, Lady Susan, who the BBC feared might have smacked Queen Elizabeth. Lady Susan emailed BBC chief historian Robert Seatter about why the BBC had allowed ITV footage of an interview she late husband had recorded for the corporation about the Panorama scandal in 2020 as the scandal reared its head, with the Mail revealing Bashir forged and lied her way into Diana's trust.

Earlier this week, Andrew Webb joined host Sarah Vine and Pierce to talk about his latest triumph in securing 10,000 new pages of BBC correspondence. However, the overwhelming majority of the documents are heavily redacted, prompting fresh suspicions of a cover-up at the firm.

The Panorama interview with Princess Diana, which was also the most relevant in British television history, was broadcast in 1995. It has been one of the biggest revelations in the BBC's history three decades, with a soaring monument to dishonesty and a lack of journalistic integrity. Not only did disgraced journalist Martin Bashir appalling methods to entrap Diana, but the company itself participated in covering up the scandal. The broadcaster seems to have learned no lessons three years after Lord Dyson's exorbitating paper laid the deceit's magnitude.

Last night, Martin Bashir owed the scandal surrounding his Diana interview to his 'non-white' status at the BBC. Racism, according to the former Hollywood reporter, led to the "professional jealousy" he speculated to behind the controversy over the Panorama scoop, in which the princess notably announced, "There are three of us in this marriage." Bashir said in a 2020 email released yesterday that there was 'incredation' at the BBC that a second-generation immigrant with non-white working-class roots should have the temerity to enter a royal palace.'

Despite being ordered not to by a judge, the BBC came under fire last night for failing to release thousands of emails related to the Martin Bashir story. The potentially explosive records may have exposed an ongoing cover-up of what BBC bosses knew about Bashir's deception in order to secure his controversial interview with Princess Diana. After fighting a two-year fight to keep them under wraps, last month, the Mail revealed how Judge Brian Kennedy had demanded the corporation hand over the emails and doubted its credibility.

In 1995, Bashir's television interview with him attracted 23 million viewers, sparking a worldwide media buzz. Bashir said, "there were three people in this marriage," a reference to then Prince Charles' affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Consort. Diana and Charles had been separated for three years by then and would divorce in 1996. Bashir later revealed that to gain access to the princess, she gave her brother, Earl Spencer, inaccurate bank information that indicated that his former head of security was receiving money from tabloids and the security companies to spy on his sister. Bashir told Diana a string of lies, claiming that Prince Charles was having an affair with then royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, which caused her to become pregnant and have an abortion as a result. However, Ms Brown (right), 70, who has written a series of books on Diana and the Royal Family, believes that if she had not been deceived by Bashir, she would have still speak to the public even if she hadn't been misled.

According to a recent book, the King has embarked on his effort to modernize the Royal Family, including making Buckingham Palace 'the People's Palace.' After a ten-year restoration campaign is complete in 2027, the public could have year-round access to the monarchy's headquarters. Charles, who is always conscious of his environmental role, also wants to rewrite its green credentials. According to the book Charles III: New King, Buckingham Palace engineers are engaged on next-generation solar panels, heat exchange pumps under the Palace lake, and "slinky" heat pipes. New Court is the new one. The Inside Story,

An information rights tribunal has ordered Bashir's interview with Princess Diana (left) within weeks, more than two years after journalist Andrew Webb used freedom of information (FOI) legislation to request them. The broadcaster first resisted, only giving out a few of the 3,288 documents it had found, but the tribunal has since ordered that it must hand over the entire stack of content. The BBC will have the final say on blotting out its information. The scandal, which involved Bashir (right) securing the Panorama chat with the Princess of Wales in 1995, emerged after the former BBC news director Lord Hall of Birkenhead mistakenly stated that Diana's brother Earl Spencer had left the journalist bank statements.