Diana ‘had regrets’ over TV interview before it aired
PRINCESS Diana ‘deeply regretted’ her Panorama interview before it was even broadcast, according to a senior aide.
Patrick Jephson, Diana’s former private secretary, made the revelation after the Mail on Sunday uncovered documents that show how in 1995, BBC bosses including Tony Hall, then head of news, conspired with the princess to keep Buckingham Palace in the dark about the programme.
Unusually, it was decided that Diana herself should be the one to tell her mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth about the programme, in which she talked candidly about her and her husband’s extra-marital affairs, and questioned Prince Charles’s suitability to be king.
Diana chose to tell Mr Jephson just a week before the broadcast as they made an official visit to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital, and almost immediately began to question the wisdom of her actions.
He said: ‘I think the scales fell from her eyes and suddenly what had been rather a subversive or daring scheme – or however they [the BBC] had dressed it up for her – it suddenly in the cold light of day didn’t look like quite such a good idea.
‘I realised this was the first time that she had really thought about how the real world was going to react. It triggered that part of her which was not rebellious or given to dangerous stunts, which was actually very conventional and dutiful, and responsible and very awake to her broader royal responsibilities.
‘I knew from her general demeanour, her fidgeting, that she was not at all confident about what she had done and that the full implications were dawning on her.
‘I think by the time of the broadcast, she deeply regretted it, not least because it did nothing to advance her cause.’
Mr Jephson said: ‘I remember sitting in the back of the car with her and saying, “We have to tell the Queen… otherwise she will hear from someone else.” ’ Although the interview with BBC reporter Martin Bashir won Diana much public sympathy, it also alienated her from senior figures surrounding the British royal family and played into the hands of her critics who thought she was ‘unhinged’.
Diana and Prince Charles began divorce proceedings within weeks of the interview. Diana died aged 36 in a car crash in 1997.