From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 6 June

It is hard to imagine anyone would be surprised by the revelations contained in Lord Dyson’s report investigating the BBC, the disgraced reporter Martin Bashir, and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

FAME is a parasite which lives in any carcass, and Martin Bashir, the rogue BBC journalist who forged documents to secure an interview with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, spotted an irresistible opportunity, and which he knew would, if he could realise his scheming plot, win him fame and fortune.

Knowing there was no chance of winning Diana’s consent, he concocted a nefarious scheme which he suspected would achieve his end. Together with a crony, he created false bank statements which he presented to her brother, Earl Spencer. Despicably, Bashir claimed senior members of the royal household were being paid to provide a newspaper with damaging stories about Diana. The information was so convincing Earl Spencer arranged an introduction. With his foot-in-the-door, and emboldened by the fraudulent documents, Bashir’s now famous Panorama interview took place.

Screened internationally, it helped changed the course of history. Never before had a senior royal spoken so publicly about their problems.

Consequently, The Queen, accepting the marriage was irretrievably broken, wrote to Charles and Diana and advising them to seek a divorce. While Princess Anne had divorced in 1992, Charles was the first heir to dissolve his marriage.

Senior journalists at the BBC were surprised the Princess of Wales had agreed to talk with a relatively unknown junior journalist, and who to that time had no connection with royal reporting. No-one suspected his treachery. Overnight it brought him international recognition and enormous financial bargaining power.

Modern day practices, including employment agreements, have reinvented the workplace. Success is measured by celebrity and an accumulation of wealth. It would be naïve to dismiss those tantalising factors from Bashir’s savage exploitation of the Princess of Wales.

There is an unhealthy, public obsession with celebrity and its surrounding furore. The more salacious, the more destructive the content, the greater the audience interest. Viewers and readers have developed a penchant for the abject misery of others; a prurient, insatiable appetite for the public unravelling of other people’s lives.

For journalists, the opportunity to earn vast sums of money is as close, or elusive, as one explosive, exclusive interview. For Bashir it was Diana, Princess of Wales. Without her interview notoriety might never have come his way. His implacability was matched only by his deception.

The ramifications of Bashir’s appalling roguery cannot be over-stated. The effect on the already damaged relationship between The Prince and Princess of Wales, and the immediate family, was profound, and lasting.

As a consequence of the report, The Duke of Cambridge has talked publicly of his mother’s paranoia and isolation in the final two years of her life, which he believes were, irrefutably, exacerbated by the fake documents produced by Bashir in his self-centred quest for fame.

Equally important is the impact on the royal family and our system of government. The public were disappointed by the revelations. There followed a period swamped by a constant swirling debate, arguing Charles should step-aside in the line of succession and pass the throne to Prince William. With time and patience the sentiment appears to have faded. The Prince of Wales’ commitment to his duty has never been in question.

Bashir, who was reported to be seriously ill from COVID 19 related issues, has, like Lazarus, miraculously rallied and given an interview to the London Times. While he conceded the forgeries were ‘silly’, he accepts no responsibility for the maelstrom which the interview created. Spuriously, and improbably, he contends the Princess of Wales was not influenced by his disingenuousness.

The veracity of that claim he knows will never be satisfactorily tested in a court of law. Diana, Princess of Wales, is dead!

For 25-years the public has believed a lie and the interview should never be aired again.

Bashir should be held to account. He lied, egregiously.

Roland can be heard each Monday at 10.45am on radio 3BA, with Brett Macdonald and contacted via [email protected].