How the BBC scapegoated Martin Bashir

00:00 05:15

Jonathan Maitland has narrated this article for you to listen to.

I have become rather obsessed with Martin Bashir and his downfall. Three years ago, I began researching for a play based around his infamous 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, which he secured by forging bank statements and reinforcing her belief that there was an Establishment conspiracy against her. When I started writing I thought I would soon understand him. But he still baffles me. When we corresponded recently via email, he suggested playing himself on stage or, failing that, what about Idris Elba? I couldn’t tell if he was joking.  

I knew Bashir pretty well back in the day. We were fellow reporters at the BBC and ITV for 13 years. He even joined my covers band Surf’n’Turf on percussion, and very good he was too. He was a world-class flatterer, forever telling people how brilliant they were and how it was his life’s ambition to work with them. Most saw through his smoke-up-the-fundament routine, but plenty didn’t.

What fascinates me is how exactly he finally managed to win Diana’s confidence. The document-forging got him through the door, but how did she come to trust him enough to let him make her pasta and pesto in her kitchen? And why did he become the Malcolm X of journalism, getting the story by any means necessary? How did he justify it to himself? 

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first. Bashir’s methods were wrong and maybe sociopathic. As well as forging documents, he fed Diana a series of lurid (and possibly libellous) stories during his intense pre-interview wooing of her. So I’m not defending him. But as with most scandals, the truth is less Manichean than the received wisdom of Diana=angel, Bashir=devil.