BBC veteran David Dimbleby says Princess Diana ‘wasn’t coerced or bullied into 1995 Panorama interview’ | Celebrities

David Dimbleby has said Princess Diana was not coerced or bullied into giving the infamous 1995 Panorama interview.

The 83-year-old veteran BBC broadcaster said she clearly wanted to “tell her side” of her life in the spotlight.

His claim comes after a huge outcry over the means rogue journalist Martin Bashir, 59, used to secure interviews, including ordering fake bank statements used to pay people to keep Diana under surveillance .

David said: “I don’t believe Diane was forced to give it.

“She clearly wants to have her say, she was not bullied or pushed to do so. The videos show that what she said was true.’

Lord Dyson’s report in an interview last year revealed “deceptive behaviour” used by Bashir to secure a face-to-face meeting.

Along with using falsified bank statements, the reporter is also accused of spreading false defamation against Princes William and Harry’s former nanny, Tigi Legge-Bourke, to whom the BBC had to pay compensation.

Mr Dimbleby’s claims came as a four-part series investigating the princess’s death began on Channel 4 on Sunday night. (21.08.22)

Next Tuesday, David is also presenting a BBC documentary about the biggest controversy, but he has been banned from using footage of Diana on the show.

A number of new claims have emerged ahead of the 25th anniversary of Diana’s death aged 36 in a car crash in a Paris tunnel on 31 August 1997.

They include that a letter in which she warned she could die in a staged crash was only handed over to French investigators six years after her fatal collision, a new documentary claims.

The series Diana Inquest: Death in Paris, which began on August 21, referred to the so-called “Mishkan Memo”, written by the Princess of Wales’s legal adviser in 1995, which is said to be an account of what Diana said during her meeting with Victor Mishkonem and her personal private secretary at the time.

Diana apparently claimed that a source told her that there would be plans to “get rid of her” by April 1996, using the car crash method that would leave her either crippled or dead.

The Daily Mail also claims that although Mishkon passed his note to senior Metropolitan Police officers in 1997 when Diana died, it was not sent to French authorities until six years later, who were investigating her car crash in a Paris tunnel.