Princess Diana would still have done a bombshell interview even if she had not been duped by BBC journalist Martin Bashir, royal writer Tina Brown has claimed.

The late royal’s TV interview with Bashir was watched by 23million people in 1995 and caused a worldwide media frenzy.

She told Bashir ‘there were three people in this marriage’ – a reference to the then Prince Charles‘s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Consort.

By then, Diana and Charles had been separated for three years and would go on to divorce in 1996.

It later emerged that, to secure access to the princess, Bashir showed her brother, Earl Spencer, false bank statements which suggested his former head of security had been receiving money from tabloids and the security services to spy on his sister.

Once he had gained access, Bashir told Diana a string of lies, convincing her that Prince Charles was having an affair with then royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke and that she became pregnant and had an abortion as a result.

However, Ms Brown, 70, who has published a series of books on Diana and the Royal Family, believes the princess would still have spoken to the press even if she had not been misled by Bashir.

Princess Diana would still have done a bombshell interview even if she had not been duped by BBC journalist Martin Bashir , royal writer Tina Brown has claimed
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Princess Diana would still have done a bombshell interview even if she had not been duped by BBC journalist Martin Bashir , royal writer Tina Brown has claimed


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The late royal’s TV interview with Bashir was watched by 23million people in 1995 and caused a worldwide media frenzy

She told the Scandal Mongers podcast: ‘I’m of the opinion that Diana still said in that interview, everything that she wanted to say, and I’m actually also of the opinion, she would have given an interview to somebody else, she was sort of looking to unload all that.

‘But perhaps it wouldn’t have been quite such a sort of bridge-burning voltage that it was, if she hadn’t been under the kind of illusion that there were all of these people spying on her.’

Bashir also commissioned fake bank statements that purported to show how payments were made into the account of Diana’s private secretary, Patrick Jephson, from intelligence services monitoring Diana’s movements.

Mr Jephson quit in January 1996 after what he later called a ‘deeply uncomfortable’ final meeting with Diana.

In 2022, the BBC paid him substantial damages and apologised ‘unreservedly’.

Speaking of the incident involving Ms Legge-Bourke, whom she approached at a party and said, ‘sorry about the baby’ in the false belief she had been pregnant with Charles’s child, Ms Brown added: ‘That all sounded like she had gone so, you know, crazy, essentially.

Ms Brown's most recent book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, was published in 2022
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Ms Brown’s most recent book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, was published in 2022

‘But of course, now we understand she’d been told Tiggy Legge-Bourke had aborted a child by Charles and that she had been told Patrick Jephson was her chief spy.’

A bombshell report found that Bashir lied to obtain his interview with Diana.

The independent inquiry found the shamed journalist used ‘deceitful’ methods later covered up by a ‘woefully ineffective’ internal investigation by Tony Hall, who later became BBC director-general.

Ms Brown’s most recent book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, was published in 2022.

In 2007, she released biographical work The Diana Chronicles.