Princess Diana's Life Took 'Disastrous Course' After Martin Bashir's Lies, Author Andy Webb Claims

It's one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern age: What if the tragic, untimely death of Princess Diana in a Paris tunnel never happened?

A new, damning allegation suggests that her passing was not merely a cruel twist of fate, but a direct, heartbreaking consequence of the BBC's concerted effort to conceal the ruthless tactics of one disgraced journalist. For over twenty years, journalist Andy Webb has meticulously investigated the web of 'lies' spun by Martin Bashir to secure his now-infamous 1995 sit-down with the beloved royal.

Webb, a former BBC staffer himself, has now stepped forward with a powerful claim: the BBC and Bashir may bear responsibility for Diana's death, arguing that their actions put her on a path of self-destruction that tragically cut her life short. Webb's findings offer a horrifying vision of a life that could have been, had the truth come out sooner.

The Stunning Claim: Diana 'Would Be Alive Today' If Not for the BBC's Silence

'Diana would be 64 years old, she's got her five grandchildren and for her family it's that knowledge, if the BBC had done what they clearly should have done, even on that basis of the simple duty of care to notifying on what had happened [with the interview] her life would have followed a different course,' Webb asserted in a new interview with the Australian Herald Sun.

Webb's investigation into the tell-all, which was watched by an estimated 200 million people worldwide, expanded upon the findings of the 2021 inquiry led by Lord Dyson. Dyson's investigation concluded that Bashir had, in fact, used forged documents to gain the trust of the then-34-year-old Diana before she agreed to do the interview.

Webb leaves little doubt about the journalist's culpability. 'If Bashir hadn't done what Bashir did, things would have been very, very different, of course they would,' he claimed. Webb alleges that Bashir's deceit was known to his superiors remarkably quickly. 'What his bosses knew quite quickly was that Bashir had commissioned forged documents; they knew that he had passed these documents off as real, and they knew Bashir had lied about what he had done three times when asked about it.'

The Disastrous Course: Unpacking Martin Bashir's Coercive Tactics and the Loss of Trust

The consequences of the interview and the deception used to obtain it, according to Webb, were immediate and devastating. The Lord Dyson inquiry also found that the BBC's initial internal investigation in 1996 into how Bashir secured his interview was 'woefully ineffective' and that the corporation had actively 'covered up' any wrongdoing, lending credence to Webb's current claim.

Webb's book, Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana, delves further into these details, drawing on interviews, internal BBC papers, and testimonies from those directly involved. The author contends that the fallout from Bashir's lies led to the systematic removal of key people in Diana's life.

'Diana's family, her brother [Earl Spencer], in particular, is firmly of the view that her life would not have followed the disastrous course which it did follow,' Webb stated. He added, 'As a result of the lies Bashir told, Diana got rid of the people around her whom she trusted, who had her best interests at heart, most important of all her private secretary Patrick Jephson.'

The scale of Bashir's alleged deceptions was immense. Webb alleges in his book that Bashir spun tales that included false claims that Prince Edward had AIDS, that Prince Harry and Prince William's nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, had become pregnant by Prince Charles and aborted their child, and that William, then only 13, was wearing a watch used to record conversations.

These shocking claims, Webb writes, helped convince a paranoid Diana that she needed to act swiftly, leading her to agree to film the interview in unusual secrecy at Kensington Palace on Nov. 5, 1995. Webb argues that the emotional manipulation put Diana on a fatal trajectory. '(Bashir) grooms her, he gaslights her, he terrifies her, and you can even say you get to coercive control because what he wanted her to do was sit in front of the Panorama TV camera. What happened to Diana is so lurid, so amazingly cruel, yet it is also kind of fascinating...'

The shocking television interview, Webb contends, led Diana on a tragic path that culminated in her death in a Paris tunnel less than two years later. 'As a result of the lies Bashir told, Diana got rid of the people around her whom she trusted who had her best interests at heart, most important of all, her private secretary Patrick Jephson, he's gone within weeks of the Panorama interview, she gets rid of her chauffeur.'

Following the publication of the Dyson Inquiry in 2021, Bashir, now 62, publicly apologised for his conduct in securing the interview. However, the apology has not quelled the lasting emotional distress. In 2022, Harry and William's nanny, Legge-Bourke, said, '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 programme and the false narrative it created have haunted the family in the years since.'