EXCLUSIVE: New Book Lays Bare 'Full Extent of Mafia-Style Trickery' That Led to Princess Di's Infamous BBC Tell-All — And How It Will Scar Princes William and Harry Forever
Details behind Princess Diana's infamous BBC interview have been exposed.
Nov. 18 2025, Published 7:40 p.m. ET
The full extent of the "mafia-style trickery" used to secure Princess Diana's 1995 BBC Panorama interview has been laid bare in a new book, which also tells how the deceptions will leave her sons scarred for life.
RadarOnline.com can reveal former BBC reporter Andy Webb's investigation into how the infamous TV tell-all came about spans three decades and follows the 2021 inquiry by Lord Dyson, which found reporter Martin Bashir used forged documents to win the confidence of Diana, then 34, before she agreed to the chat watched by an estimated 200 million people worldwide.
Extraordinary Scale of Deception
Andy Webb exposes the mafia style trickery behind Princess Diana's 'Panorama' interview in his new book.
Dyson also concluded the BBC's initial internal investigation in 1996 into how Bashir landed his interview had been "woefully ineffective" and the corporation had "covered up" any wrongdoing.
Webb's book, Dianarama, expands the picture further, based on interviews, internal BBC papers, and testimonies from figures directly involved, some of which he claims only recently surfaced.
Webb describes the saga as "a story more lurid, more fantastical, than anything that happened at the Tudor court of Henry VIII."
One of the central episodes he recounts is Bashir's initial approach to Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, supplying forged bank statements and feeding him alarming claims about surveillance.
Spencer told Webb: "He was trying to make me paranoid."
The book alleges Bashir's deceptions were extraordinary in scale, including false claims Prince Edward had Aids, that Prince Harry and Prince William's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke had gotten pregnant by Prince Charles and aborted their child, and that William, then 13, was wearing a watch used to record conversations.
These claims, Webb writes, helped convince Diana she needed to act quickly, and she agreed to film the interview under unusual secrecy at Kensington Palace on November 5, 1995.
Hidden Documents and Mishcon Note
Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, said Bashir tried to make him paranoid with alarming claims.
Another revelation concerns what Webb calls Bashir's early pursuit of a $2million book deal. He cites publishing executive Roland Philipps, who said the reporter appeared to be eyeing a bestseller before even securing the Panorama interview.
Webb also revisits the so-called Mishcon Note, written by Diana's lawyer Lord Mishcon and witnessed by her private secretary Patrick Jephson. It recorded Diana's belief she might be harmed in a staged car crash and efforts could be made "if not to get rid of her, then at least to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared unbalanced."
The book also details BBC documents Webb claims were hidden or lost, including an eight-page 1996 memo from Anne Sloman, then the BBC's acting head of weekly programs, which was dated April 22, 1996.
Webb compares it to a "treasure map," saying it revealed the existence of other BBC documents that later went missing.
Sloman's note is said to end with the words, "The Diana story is probably now dead, unless Spencer talks."
When questioned by Lord Dyson in 2021, Sloman admitted to the BBC's approach to the controversy: "It sounds a bit like the mafia, but it wasn't meant that way, I promise you."
Royal Rage and Conspiracy
Simone Simmons blamed Bashir for Diana's death.
Webb also reports frustrations from figures involved in the aftermath and rage over the Dyson inquiry.
Spencer said about the probe: "I was very upset from the beginning with the parameters. It was quite clear to me that they were set so that nobody could look at the current BBC's attitude.
"For instance, the cover-up that I felt was being perpetuated in 2020, there was no possibility of Dyson looking at that. And I thought that was absolutely germane to the case because it's a conspiracy of 25 years. It wasn't just back in the '90s."
Dyson later said: "I think in hindsight I made a mistake in not asking for counsel to the investigation to take some of the burden off me, to ask some of the questions, which is what happens in, say, public inquiries. So I had to do it all."
William said after the Dyson report about his tragic mother: "She was failed not just by a rogue reporter but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way rather than asking the tough questions."
Legge-Bourke said in 2022: "The distress caused to the royal family is a source of great upset to me. I know first-hand how much they were affected at the time, and how the program and the false narrative it created have haunted the family in the years since."
A 'Terribly Dangerous Course'
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Prince William said BBC leaders failed Diana after the Dyson report.
Webb argues the Bashir interview sent Diana onto "a terribly dangerous course," linking it to events leading to her death in a Paris car crash in 1997.
"Our mother lost her life because of this," Harry once said.
Simone Simmons, Diana's therapist, shared: "She was floating on a cloud that you couldn't get her down from."
She added: "I hold Bashir fully responsible for Diana's death. Not partly responsible. Fully responsible. If it wasn't for him, she would still be alive."
A BBC spokesperson said the corporation accepted Dyson's conclusions in full.
Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana is published on November 20.
