One- sided war over BBC’s Diana tape

FORMER BBC director general John Birt’s boast that he outwitted his chairman Lord Hussey over the infamous Panorama interview with Princess Diana has caused renewed distress to ailing Hussey’s family, I hear.

Lord Birt’s crowing on last night’s BBC2 Arena programme — to mark the tenth anniversary of the interview — has upset Lady Susan Hussey, the 82- year- old war veteran’s wife and long- standing lady- inwaiting to the Queen.

She has taken particular exception to the claim that Hussey, as chairman of the BBC at the time, tried to engineer Birt’s dismissal after Diana’s appearance.

Lord Birt, now Tony Blair’s ‘ blue skies thinker’, told in the documentary how he kept details of the late Princess’s interview a secret from Hussey for as long as possible.

Because of this, he asserted, Hussey later ‘ sought to take action against me. He was very vengeful. He tried to get the governors to condemn the programme, which they refused to do.

‘He failed to get what he wanted: a stinging rebuke which, he calculated, would force my resignation.’

But Hussey, who was badly wounded during World War II and spent seven months as a prisoner in Colditz, is not able to defend himself.

Lady Susan tells me: ‘ My husband is very poorly now. He is not well enough to respond to Lord Birt. We have to turn the other cheek.’