The BBC reporter who got the bombshell interview with Princess Diana that led to his divorce blamed his own royalty for the “blemishes” he was accused of spreading against the royal family to guarantee the chat.
Martin Bashir, who is currently the BBC’s religious affairs reporter, is under internal investigation for allegedly lying to Princess Diana to secure the 1995 interview in which she revealed that there were “three people” in her marriage to Prince Charles.
The investigation was launched in November, following the appearance of a series of notes made by Count Spencer, Diana’s brother, days before the September 1995 interview. Spencer said he wrote down a series of charges against the royal family at a meeting with Bashir and your sister. Among the “blemishes” was that the queen was ill and on the verge of abdication, that Prince Charles was in love with his children’s nanny and that Prince William wore a Swatch watch that contained a listening device.
But in leaked documents seen by the Telegraph, Bashir says the “stains” made at the meeting were wrongly attributed to him, and were more consistent with the comments made by the princess herself, who confessed in a later meeting with the reporter that she regularly consulted mystics .
Spencer claimed last year that Bashir used fake bank statements that wrongly sought to show that two members of the royal family were being paid by security services to spy on Princess Diana.
The investigation, which is being led by a former judge, is expected to close next month.