Princess Diana’s butler has recalled the tense lead up to her Panorama interview and revealed he played a role in bringing broadcaster Martin Bashir into her residence.
The former servant to the royal household, 62, recounted how Diana had asked him to pick up ‘someone,’ on the upcoming Channel 5 documentary Diana: An Interview that Shocked the World, airing Sunday at 9pm.
He said he collected Martin Bashir, then a little known journalist at Panorama, and hid him under a blanket in his car to bring him to Kensington Palace so he could meet Diana.
The explosive 20 November 1995 Panorama interview saw the Princess of Wales, who was still married to the Prince Charles, now 71, open up about his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles and struggling with bulimia, among other subjects.
Paul Burrell, who used to be Lady Diana’s butler, revealed how he hid BBC’s Martin Bashit (right) under a blanket in his car and brought him to Kensington Palace in the lead up to her explosive Panorama interview
Burrell said he had no idea at the time Diana’s friendship with Bashir would lead to a major interview.
The first time he brought Bashir to Kensington Palace was upon a request from Diana herself in October 1995, about a month before the fateful interview that would rock the nation.
‘I remember the princess telling me: “I’d like you to go and pick up somebody at White City, it’s a secret, we don’t want anybody to know about it”,’ he said on the programme.
‘I do remember going in my car to pick up Martin Bashir,’ he went on, ‘and he laid on the backseat of the car and I covered him with a blanket.
Burrell said he thought Diana (pictured with him in Bosnia in 1997) would benefit from a friendship with Bashir, and said he never thought it would lead to a major interview
‘No one knew that Martin Bashir was visiting Diana Princess of Wales and it was to be kept that way.
Burrell then went on to describe the excitement both Diana and Bashir felt about their new friendship.
‘He was like a small child, jumping down the stairs of Kensignton Palace,’ he said. ‘For him it was so exciting.’
The princess’s butler also said he felt Diana would benefit from her connection with Bashir.
‘I thought the princess, at that time, had very few friends and she’d now got herself an insider at the BBC, someone who would get her media advice
‘I didn’t think that friendship would turn into a major interview,’ he added.
Just weeks after Diana’s interview with Bashir, the royal couple started divorce proceedings. Pictured: Princess Diana attending a Vanity Fair party at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1994
Diana believed she should give the interview after Prince Charles’s interview with Jonathan Dimbleby the year before, in which he admitted adultery.
23 million viewers tuned in to watch the princess discuss her husband’s affair and hinting that Camilla Parker-Bowles was at the source of the issues she had encountered in her marriage.
Just weeks after Diana’s interview with Bashir, the royal couple started divorce proceedings.
It catapulted Bashir to stardom and he won awards for the spellbinding Panorama special.
But the top brass at the BBC were concerned about how he had gained such access and opened an internal investigation.
In Richard Lindley’s book on the history of Panorama, Hall and Anne Sloman, a senior BBC staffer, summoned Bashir to Broadcasting House.
Sloman is quoted as saying: ‘It was a silly thing to do. It didn’t get him the interview; why he did it, God only knows.’
Bashir engineered the scoop of the century by showing fake bank statements to Diana’s brother Charles Spencer, according to The Sunday Times.
In 1996, the BBC carried out an internal review of Bashir’s behaviour which judged that the fake bank statements – forged by a BBC graphics designer – had not helped to gain the interview.
But the fake dossiers showed that a former employee of Spencer’s had been selling information about the family.
Bashir claimed that they had been given to him by a source in the intelligence community, The Times reported.
Bashir first contacted the earl, who was protective of his sister, three months before the interview, a source close to the Spencer family told the paper.
The source said Bashir told Spencer that he was looking into media ethics.
Spencer went on to arrange a meeting between himself, his sister and Bashir at a friend’s apartment in London in September 1995.
Spencer, who kept notes of the discussion, warned his sister against dealings with Bashir over the sensational allegations he was making, the source told The Times.