BBC investigates Bashir dirty tricks claims

THE BBC’S director- general has launched an independent inquiry into the dirty tricks allegedly used to clinch a landmark Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, amid warnings that it could become the corporation’s phone hacking scandal.

Tim Davie confirmed yesterday that he had begun the process of commissioning a review into claims that Martin Bashir forged bank statements to prey on the Princess’s insecurities.

It will be led by someone with no direct link to the corporation and will take place irrespective of Mr Bashir’s health, following weeks of claims that the journalist at the heart of the furore is too ill to respond to questioning.

It came as Lord Grade, the former BBC chairman, questioned whether a letter allegedly written by the Princess in 1996, absolving the corporation of any blame, had been forged.

Mr Davie said: “We are in the process of commissioning a robust and independent investigation.”

All “key protagonists” will be called to give evidence, including Lord Hall, former director general of the BBC, who oversaw an internal investigation into the claims in 1996.

The inquiry concluded “there had been no question of Mr Bashir trying to mislead or do anything improper” and that Mr Bashir was “an honest man”.

It was closed down almost immediately on receipt of the Princess’s letter – which has since disappeared.

Lord Grade warned that the allegations had left “a very dark cloud hanging over BBC journalism” and queried the veracity of the Princess’s handwritten note. “We’ve got to get into the timeline of who knew what when,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One.

“Was the Diana letter also a forgery, is the question that needs to be asked.”

Rosa Monckton, whose daughter is the Princess’s godchild, has described a “sudden change of behaviour” in her friend in the run-up to the interview.

The Princess grew paranoid and changed her phone number at Kensington Palace and was convinced Princes William and Harry’s nanny was having an affair with Prince Charles, according to a piece by Mrs Monckton for the Daily Mail. “She was obsessed – wrongly – with the idea that Tiggy Legge-bourke, who was acting as a companion to her two boys, was having an affair with Prince Charles. At a later meeting, she told me that Tiggy was pregnant with his child,” she wrote.

Mrs Monckton claimed that 10 days before her death, the Princess had told her that she regretted doing the interview because “of the damage it did to my boys”.