Charles Spencer has once again blasted the BBC over the infamous Panorama interview with his late sister Diana, Princess of Wales, and this time he’s demanding the corporation finally end what he called a “conspiracy of silence”.
Speaking at the Althorp Literary Festival in Northamptonshire, Diana’s younger brother urged incoming BBC chairman Matt Brittin to “lance the boil” surrounding the scandal that has haunted the broadcaster for almost three decades.
Earl Spencer calls out the BBC over Princess Diana Martin Bashir interview
The Earl called for the BBC to appoint an official historian to go through every remaining document connected to disgraced journalist Martin Bashir and the controversial methods used to secure Diana’s explosive 1995 interview.
“I think actually to lance the boil and over time the conspiracy of silence and just brush this all out once and for all,” Spencer said during the discussion, according to the Daily Mail.
The Panorama interview remains one of the most shocking and controversial moments in royal history. Bashir famously used forged bank statements and a string of false claims to gain Diana’s trust and secure the bombshell sit-down.
Among the lies, Bashir falsely suggested people close to Diana were spying on her and even claimed Prince William’s watch had been bugged to secretly record conversations.
Spencer didn’t hold back when discussing Bashir himself, branding the former reporter a “compulsive liar”.
“I wouldn’t really want to give him the time of day, is the honest truth,” he added.
The Earl also described the Panorama broadcast as “the worst piece of journalism I’ve seen” and claimed there were “five suspects” in senior BBC positions who oversaw the alleged cover-up afterwards.
Panorama interview
Spencer has repeatedly spoken about how deeply he believes the BBC’s actions affected Diana’s later life and safety.
In a 2025 interview with PEOPLE magazine, he drew a direct link between the deception surrounding the interview and the tragic circumstances of Diana’s death in Paris two years later.
“There are high-ranking people in the BBC who participated in securing this interview, through appalling deception,” Spencer said.
“I am sure that this led directly to Diana being left vulnerable in Paris on the night she died.”
Following the interview, Diana reportedly became increasingly distrustful of those around her after Bashir convinced her that close aides and royal insiders were betraying her.
Her former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, previously said Bashir had “picked a very opportune moment” to manipulate the princess, who was already emotionally vulnerable and anxious following years of intense media scrutiny.
Prince William was deeply ‘saddened’ by the interview
The scandal exploded again in 2021 after an independent inquiry led by Lord Dyson concluded Bashir had acted deceitfully to secure the interview, while the BBC’s internal investigation was branded “woefully ineffective”.
At the time, Prince William issued one of the most personal and emotional statements of his public life as he condemned the broadcaster’s failures.
“What saddens me most is that if the BBC had properly investigated the complaints and concerns first raised in 1995, my mother would have known that she had been deceived,” he said.
“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. These failings… not only let my mother down and my family down; they let the public down too.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC appointed Lord Dyson to investigate how Martin Bashir obtained the 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. The Dyson Report was published in 2021, the BBC accepted its findings in full and publicly apologised for its part in the report’s conclusions.”
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