SPENCER’S WITHERING LETTER TO CURRENT DG

23 October 2020 Dear Mr Davie,

As you will know, there has been a great deal of media interest and speculation surrounding the 25th anniversary of the Panorama interview conducted with my late sister, Diana. It is correct that I was the person who introduced Martin Bashir to Diana. But nobody seems to fully understand the methods that Bashir descended to, to get to that point. He appeared in my life on 31 August 1995 – precisely two years before her death. I have detailed notes of his extraordinary allegations, and I have records of many of his calls, as well as notes from him to prove my version of events. So odd were Bashir’s initial claims that I rang the then Executive Producer of Panorama to see if he’d vouch for his reporter. He fully endorsed Bashir as one of his best reporters. Two days ago I was shown the part of Tony Hall’s report to the Board of Governors of the BBC. It is factually inaccurate. It skirts over the web of deceit spun by those in the organisation that you now control, at top speed. It is also astounding to me that I was not contacted at that time, so that senior figures in the BBC could hear my version of events. It is appalling to me that the BBC, Panorama and Mr Bashir have not only profited from the interview with my late sister (who was clearly in an extremely fragile psychological state at the time) or apologised for what occurred. I am especially appalled, given the BBC’s recent admission that Bashir deployed false bank accounts when convincing me of this trustworthiness. The BBC has chosen to find that those bank statements played no part in securing the interview. But that is palpably untrue: if it were not for me seeing these statements, I would not have introduced Bashir to my sister. You see, some of the bank accounts that he showed me (which I assume now also to be false) implicated senior courtiers in the most grave corruption. One of these men lost his job in the wake of that interview. It would be fair to assume that his besmirched name led to his fall from grace. Meanwhile Bashir alleged to me that he had evidence of senior members of the Royal Family saying or doing appalling things – wishing members of my family dead; fathering a child that had to be aborted. That a publicly-funded media corporation with a reputation for the highest form of journalism stooped so deep into the gutter is beyond belief. And yet it is so.

Yours sincerely, Charles Spencer