Channel 4 defends Diana documentary containing intimate details of her sex life
CHANNEL 4 is facing a backlash from Princess Diana’s family and friends after the broadcaster announced it is going ahead with the screening of a new documentary revealing the intimate relationship and sex life between her and Prince Charles.
Due to be aired to mark the 20th anniversary of her death on August 31, 1997, it features previously unseen footage of Diana speaking to her voice coach, Peter Settelen.
She lays bare details about her and Charles’s sex life and at one point claimed that her husband had said it was in his right to have a “mistress”.
She said that the pair had sex “once every three weeks” but that it fizzled a few years after Prince Harry was born in 1984.
Diana also confessed having found solace with her married protection officer Barry Mannakee, a relationship she suggested was not sexual but that she had considered fleeing the royal household to be with him.
She said she felt “deeply in love” with him and when he later died she described the moment as “the biggest blow of my life”.
Describing the time she confronted the future king about his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, she said that Charles told her he refused “to be the only Prince of Wales who never had a mistress”. She also claimed the Duke of Edinburgh told his son he could have an affair with Camilla if his marriage failed after five years.
Diana also revealed that she approached the Queen for advice. “I went to the top lady, sob- bing,” she explains in the tape “and I said: ‘What do I do. I’m coming to you, what do I do?’ And she said: ‘I don’t know what you should do. Charles is hopeless.’ And that was it, that was help.”
The footage was recorded by Mr Settelen, who helped the princess with her public speaking between 1992 and 1993.
It was returned to him after a lengthy dispute with Diana’s family, headed by her brother Earl Spencer, who said the footage belonged to them.
He has pleaded with Channel 4 not to broadcast the footage, which he told the Mail on Sunday would cause distress to her sons.
One of Diana’s closest friends Rosa Monckton also told the paper: “How intrusive is this? It doesn’t matter that it was 20-odd years ago. The tapes should have been sent to the boys. I just think it is absolutely disgusting.”
Penny Junor, the royal biographer, told The Telegraph the documentary was “another way of exploiting Diana”.
But Channel 4 defended its decision saying: “We carefully considered all the material used in the documentary and, though the recordings were made in private, the subjects covered are a matter of public record and provide a unique insight into the preparations Diana undertook to gain a public voice and tell her own personal story, which culminated in her later interview for Panorama.”