The Princess Diana interview and alleged BBC cover-up
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Was one of the most famous interviews in UK television history secured by underhand means? Twenty-five years on, the BBC finds itself under fresh scrutiny.
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Guests:
Valentine Low, Royal Correspondent at The Times.
Rosamund Urwin, Media and Technology Correspondent at The Sunday Times.
Host: David Aaronovitch
Clips used: BBC Panorama, AP, ITN/ITV
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It was the biggest TV interview of the century. |
| 0:05.0 | 25 years ago this month, Princess Diana, the estranged wife of the future king, |
| 0:10.0 | went on camera and blasted her husband and his exalted family. |
| 0:15.3 | For the Queen, it was the final straw and she thought we just got to finish this and so she |
| 0:22.1 | wrote to both Diana and to Charles saying that really |
| 0:26.2 | it's time to end this and you too have got to get divorced. |
| 0:29.4 | The nation was a gog as the princess revealed all on the BBC's flagship current affairs program, |
| 0:35.6 | Panorama. But had the interview that transfixed the nation |
| 0:40.0 | been secured with underhand tactics. |
| 0:42.8 | It said there's this 25 year scandal that has never been broken at the BBC, that a whole bunch of people have been |
| 0:55.0 | involved in covering up and it's astonishing that it has never come out. |
| 0:59.0 | You're listening to stories of our times from The Times and the Sunday Times, I'm David Aronovich. |
| 1:04.0 | Today, the Diana Interview and the alleged BBC cover-up. Dina and Charles, |
| 1:13.0 | and Charles, oh my goodness, it was, people call it a soap opera. |
| 1:27.2 | It's much more dramatic and colourful than any soap opera. |
| 1:31.8 | That's Valentine's Lo, the Times Royal Correspondent. In 1995, he was a reporter on the London Evening Standard and well aware of the ongoing story of the |
| 1:45.0 | ongoing story of the catastrophic marriage between the Queen's eldest son and his charismatic wife, |
| 1:47.0 | a marriage that had begun festooned in hyperbole |
| 1:51.0 | 14 years earlier in 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral. |
| 1:55.0 | I Charles Philip Arthur George. |
| 1:59.0 | I Charles Philip Arthur George. |
| 2:02.0 | Take thee, Diana Francis. |
... |
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