‘LETHAL Consequences’ Bombshell Claims Link BBC Interview To Diana Death
It’s 30 years since the BBC televised Martin Bashir’s infamous Panorama interview with Princess Diana - and now Andy Webb is claiming in his new book ‘Dianarama’ that it may ultimately have led to her death. He joins Piers Morgan to discuss the reasons why. Meanwhile, Meghan Markle has been forced to deny reports that she stole a $1,700 dress as her new Christmas special on Netflix gets dismal reviews - and people are still rolling their eyes over the Harper's Bazaar interview in which she was formally introduced to her interviewer as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. And the most disgraced former royal of all Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been told by the Prime Minister that he should testify in the US about Jeffrey Epstein. Joining Piers and Andy to uncover all these stories; royal commentators Katie Nicholl, Kinsey Schofield and Tessa Dunlop. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Mando: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code PIERS at ShopMando.com! #mandopod Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/ to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Lethal Diana Interview00:11:32
BBC bosses could have gone to Diana and briefed her on what they knew and if they had, very, very plausibly her life would have followed a different course, not towards Paris.
The consequences of the interview were lethal.
We looked at the Diana interview and the Michael Jackson interview as examples of what a superstar journalist he was.
Truly, we can't trust any media.
Here's the BBC swooping in to confirm that narrative.
I like this idea, this message that she's sending out about being perfectly imperfect.
She also says in the interview, I like the community of work and the connection.
I think a lot of it is in my DNA.
This is the same Duchess of Sussex who makes hundreds of millions of dollars trading off her royal status without doing anything for it.
Meghan Markle's been forced to deny reports that she stole a $1,700 dress.
The sensational claims have been completely overshadowed by the dismal reviews for her new Christmas special on Netflix.
And on the subject of disgraced former royals, the Prime Minister says that Andrew Manbatten Windsor should testify in the US about Jeffrey Epstein.
So being discussed with my royal panel, we begin with a book that's making a lot of headlines around the world.
It's 30 years since the BBC televised this infamous interview with Princess Diana.
Andy Webb's new book, Diana Rama, claims it may ultimately have led to her death.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Andy, it's an amazing book.
You were the first person to break this story, centering on the former Panorama reporter Martin Bashir, who of course secured the infamous, famous, one of the most famous interviews in history with Diana in 1995.
I remember it very well.
I was editing the Daily Mirror at the time.
It was a bombshell.
But it wasn't what it seemed.
And the reason for that, which is the cornerstone of your book, is that Bashir faked bank statements, which he showed to Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, to try and persuade him of his credentials and who was working against his sister, suggesting that people close to Princess were being paid by the security services, embellished other stuff involving other members of her team.
And ultimately, it was that that led her to do the interview.
And the reason why people say that may have led to the circumstances of her death within two years is it started the spiral of her exit really from royal protection and everything that went when it was largely down to the lack of trust that she had with people from the royal household and people that worked for them.
So this was an incredibly consequential interview and as your book establishes, an incredibly consequential and disgraceful stitch-up by Martin Bashir.
Have I categorized this correctly, would you say?
You have, very much so.
Except I might not even go as far as to call it an interview.
An interview suggests, you know, somebody sitting there legitimately seeking information.
Wasn't that.
It was because of the plan that Martin Bashir had come with.
It was effectively a performance, you know, a double act that poor old Princess Diana found herself taking part in and she didn't realize.
So yes, you're suddenly quite right, but as I say, let's think of it that way.
Let's think of it that way.
It wasn't a genuine, you know, that interview like that.
How did you first get to hear that there were serious question marks about what Bashir had done here?
Well, I was working at the BBC.
I worked for BBC for 20 years.
When Bashir was doing his thing, my desk was probably about 100 feet away in 1995 in the White City building.
Now, at that point, I didn't have any idea whatsoever.
But really quite sooner, you know what organisations are like in the corridors.
Especially the BBC.
Absolutely, especially in the BBC.
The bad smell that began to permeate the building over this interview was really quite pronounced.
And that, you know, I've kind of wondered, one thing, and we would get on this far, but Samir Shah, who we hear about a lot of the man, currently chairman of the BBC, at the time this all went down, he was kind of number three in the packing board.
We have John Burt, we have Tony Horn, the Samir Shah.
Now, I don't know how much Mr. Shah knew about the awful things that had gone on, but there were many, many people in the BBC who knew something really bad had happened.
Is it conceivable that the current BBC chairman knew nothing about what had gone down?
I think if he did know nothing about what had gone down, it would be most odd because a lot of other people knew about stuff.
As I say, I can't sit here and make allegations about Samir Shah, but I'm just saying.
But it's very interesting that he was number three at the time and is now chairman, having just overseen the removal of the director general and the head of news over this scandal involving the incorrect editing of a Trump speech.
But interesting that the man that pulled the trigger on their departure is at the very least part of the executive team when this was all happening.
Absolutely.
I mean, I can say this year, Piers, in the book, there's only a couple of times where I sort of go off the record, as it were.
One of them was this, that at this moment, an extremely senior and knowledgeable member of the broadcasting community about a year ago, 18 months ago, went to Samir Shah and said, look, you have got to get your arms around the Diana Gate scandal, if you like.
You've got to do this.
But he hasn't.
Ignored it.
Fascinating.
The book contains a lot of revelations, but obviously the most significant person in all this is Bashir himself.
He was the religious affairs correspondent.
This was a guy supposedly kind of purer than pure, even by BBC standards.
Was he always a rogue, do you think?
I mean, was this just in his DNA or did he just pick on this big thing because he wanted the prize of the interview?
I mean, Piers, you know, you've been a senior editor.
I've been a journalist for decades too.
Sometimes, unfortunately, there are rogues and they go too far and they act, you know, they have no moral compass, if you like.
Martin Bashir was one of those.
To me, the really important issue here, and always has been, it wasn't so much the terrible things that Bashir did vis-a-vis Diana.
That was really, really terrible.
But Diana had been through scrapes before.
There was Squidgy Gate, there was Oliver Hoare, etc.
The key moment for me in this is the moment when BBC bosses, the grown-ups, the people with the moral compass, if you like, when they knew what they knew and they could have gone to Diana and briefed her on what they knew.
And if they had, very, very plausibly, her life would have followed a different course, not towards Paris.
And the really damaging thing about this was the terrible broken trust it created with some of the people closest to Diana.
Patrick Jeffson.
Well, Patrick Jeffson, who was her private secretary, is a raner.
I mean, I knew him one.
He was talking about this when he was talking about your book last week.
And, you know, it really fractured their relationship because she couldn't trust him because she had been shown documents purporting to suggest that Patrick Jeffson had been paid £40,000.
Back from the 90s, that's maybe $100,000 plus now for information about his boss.
And if you're Diana and you're already pretty paranoid about the media as she was, you know, I knew her pretty well actually by the time she died and had lunch with her and talked to her quite a lot about stuff.
And she just had a raging paranoia about the media with good reason.
Everyone was trying to get a piece of this superstar, but he, Bashir, was concocting through these fake documents a whole sense that almost everyone around her couldn't be trusted, so that only he could be trusted, so that that's why she should do the interview.
That was really his modus operandi.
Absolutely.
And in the words of Charles Spencer, her brother, he's helped me very much, worked with me closer to the book.
And I put the question to him: how broad, how strong, how real is that line from Panorama to Paris?
And he answers very, very responsibly and calmly and ends by saying, Do you know what?
The consequences of the interview were lethal.
Because when what you described happened, happened, she got Patrick Jefferson out, her chauffeur out.
The doubts and worries that she already had about the sort of the formal protective security mechanism, gone.
So there, a little over 18 months later, she's in Paris.
The car's been driven by a guy, he's drunk, has he had drugs, whatever he's done, he's speeding, and she dies.
Now, if you are Prince William and you think that there's even only a 30, 40 percent chance, 40 percent chance that his mum would not have been there if the BBC had done what they should have.
Forget she's a princess.
Do you not have a duty of care to a member of the public who you know has been shown forged documents by somebody who you know is a serial liar?
So you don't have to be Charles Spencer or indeed Diana.
You just have to be a member of the public and you have that duty of care to brief them.
They didn't do that.
So does Earl Spencer inherently believe that it was only within two years that Diana was dead?
Does he believe that there is, as you put it, this direct line pretty much that she probably on balance wouldn't have died in that underpass in Paris if it hadn't been for the events that were catalyzed by this interview?
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I put it that he has a horrible suspicion that she might not have died.
Because would she have been there with Dodie Fired if Patrick Jeffson, in particular, and Charles Spencer says specifically Patrick was the person, he said, Diana, yeah, she could be merial.
She could be emotional.
She could be difficult in the circumstances.
If Patrick had still been on the scene, he can't see a world in which his sister would have been where she was.
And then there's the practicalities like the chauffeur, security, et cetera, et cetera.
But it's the fact that that is plausible at all.
You can imagine how heartbreaking that is.
Well, there's also, I mean, there's a stunning revelation, which reminded me of something that happened when I was Editor of the Mirror, which was based on this, actually.
Charles Tried to Kill Her00:04:42
You reveal that Bashir told Diana that Prince Charles, as he was then, the king now, was trying to have her killed.
First of all, just tell me about that.
Well, we know this from a, there was a three-way meeting, it was actually September the 19th, 1995.
It's actually the first time that Bashir actually meets Diana, three-way meeting, herself, Bashir and Charles Spencer.
And at this meeting, most extraordinary things came out.
As you say, yes, Prince Charles wants to have Diana and Camilla killed, both of them killed.
Why?
Because he's pursuing an affair, all nonsense, of course.
He's pursuing an affair with the nanny, Tiggy Leg Burke, people may remember the name.
And so he wants them to be taken out so that he can marry her.
In that same meeting, stories like Prince Edward, then unmarried, has AIDS and he's being treated at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Prince William has been given a, if you like, a James Bond watch that can bug conversations in the room.
Extraordinary range of...
And the purpose of this again was what?
The purpose of this was to, and one other thing, that the Queen was going to abdicate in six months' time.
So the purpose of it was this, to sort of fill Diana's, to terrify her.
And then what happens?
You're terrified.
I'm Martin Pasha.
How can I get you out of this, Diana?
I tell you what's going to happen.
You're going to go on Panorama.
You're not going to tell them all the stuff you know about the death plots.
You're going to do two things.
You're going to show Buckingham Palace that you're tough and you're not going to go anywhere.
I'm not going anywhere.
And at the end of the interview, which is exactly what she does, she throws a massive question mark over Charles's suitability to take the throne.
So, Diana has been assured that the Queen is going to abdicate April 96.
If the panorama plan, if you like, carries through, what do you have?
Well, you have Charles takes the hint and goes off to Highgrove and does organic gardening or whatever he does.
William takes the throne.
In that scenario, Diana is the mother of the new king.
Now, that is not a bad place to be.
Yeah, she becomes a kind of queen regent consort, whatever they want to call it.
A new queen mother.
But that is what panorama was all about.
That's what that was about.
And we know, you might say, well, how do you know?
We know this because seven days before the panorama interview is recorded, Diana gave what Patrick Jefferson describes to me as he describes it was her last will and testament.
He said, if she washed up in the Thames one morning dead, people would know.
I'll keep this as quick as I can, but Diana dictated to her lawyer, Lord Michon, exactly how she saw things.
Queen's going to abdicate, murder plot, Mika Miller, Tiggy Leg Burke, she said, had actually had an abortion.
I remember all of this.
All of this, all of this, yeah.
And I remember we had a story at the mirror, which contained a copy of a letter Diana had written in which she said, I think Charles is planning to have me killed in a car accident.
And obviously it was complete nonsense, but it was actually this idea had been fed to her, it turned out, by Martin Bashir.
We didn't know that when we published that story.
So fascinating for me to see that that was the genesis of why she believed these wild things that were going on.
Let me bring in the other panel members now.
We're joined by royal commentator Katie Nicoll, historian and royal author Tessa Dunlopman from Los Angeles, the host of the Kinsey Schofer unfiltered.
Kinsey Schofer, welcome to all of you.
Okay, Tessa, this is pretty, I mean, it's pretty shocking and kind of very relevant because we're right in the middle of another panorama scandal.
And for American viewers in particular, the panorama is like 60 minutes.
It's the flagship political current affairs show of the BBC, the taxpayer-funded corporation.
And so this is really shocking that 30 years ago, this incredible interview turned out to have been orchestrated by a guy literally having fake documents created to spin lies that all the key people around Diana were betraying her, which then drove her away from them all and into the path of Dodi Fayed and then into the path of the Paris underpath and her death.
It is devastating.
BBC Management Failed Diana00:15:13
And I speak as someone and Katie too, young woman at the time, and we looked at Diana in that interview as someone talking truth to power.
She was the original woman who was nailing her colours to the mask and socking one to the establishment.
And all the time she was being manipulated.
But to bring it right up to date, my question for you, and full marks, by the way, for the extraordinary thorough way in which you've chased this down, because I've taken legal proceedings against the Bieb and I know they're Kathke-esque.
I mean, it's really hardcore.
But I want to understand, Prince William stands and he says that worse than this rogue reporter, Martin Bashir, is the great sadness that the BBC leaders looked the other way.
I get the feeling that you think, unlike Lord Dyson, Lord Dyson referred to sort of woefully inadequate management, but that you think it's worse than that.
It's almost deliberate on the part of the management that no one was held to account earlier.
Can you stack that up for me?
Why do you think that's the case?
Well, can I stack it up for you?
William.
No, William talks about leaders looking, BBC looking the other way, they're busy.
Oh, shut up.
No, no, no.
The key thing is what William very carefully said, and I will say, you know, the book has not been written sort of in isolation, if you like.
Where have I speaking?
What William said very carefully was that leaders at the BBC who looked the other way, it wasn't that they looked the right way and their vision was unfortunately clouded.
They looked the other way.
But are you accusing the BBC of deliberate deception?
I think that's what I want to understand.
I'm accusing the BBC of no more than William accused of looking, knowingly, willfully looking the other way when they should have looked somewhat.
I mean, the parallels to me with what's happened with this Trump speech thing are quite similar in the sense that they knew, right, a year ago, what had happened.
And then there was just this elaborate, long cover-up, an attempt to stop people really finding out the truth.
And again, here, a much longer period of people knowing what had gone down, or certainly seriously suspecting it, but not taking the appropriate action to bring Bashir to proper account.
Because this only came out, when was it all blown out of the water?
2020.
Right, so you're talking about, you know, this is 25 years later.
But I think what I'm trying to understand is in a world where there's so much disinformation and you can pick and choose whatever you listen to and you don't know whether to believe it, I like waking up in the morning and believing what I hear in the BBC.
And what I think I'm trying to establish is, was this just because the BBC is ridiculously enormous, their management, you know, took the foot off the pedal, nobody held Martin Bashir to account, time moved on and it kind of got lost in the weeds.
Or was there something more mendacious?
Oh, no, no, sorry, if you're saying, was there intent here?
Yes.
My view, absolutely there was intent.
Because, I mean, unlike what we'll call Trump Gate, had Martin Bashir been publicly nailed in 1996, shame for Martin Bashir, but a bigger shame still for the bosses who would have been out of the door in five minutes.
Well, let me bring Kinsey in because Martin Bashir ended up going to the United States and anchoring a show over there for NBC, I think it was.
And he did that for a few years.
He was a big, celebrated television superstar off the back of this interview and one he did with Michael Jackson, which also has a lot of question marks about how he acquired that.
What do you make of this?
And in particular, obviously, there's a lot of debate happening in America about the BBC, about panorama, because of Donald Trump now suing for a billion dollars over this editing of his January 6th speech to make it look like he actively incited the violence.
What is the reaction in the United States to this?
The reaction in the United States is specifically around the Trump scenario.
Truly, we can't trust any media.
You know, fake news, I think, started over here during the 2015-2016 campaign where Donald Trump would stand up during his campaign events and say, you can't trust the media.
And here's the BBC swooping in to confirm that narrative that he started over a decade ago.
Martin Bashir, you're absolutely right, came over to the United States and was a superstar.
He was a unique character.
And we looked at him.
We looked at the Diana interview and the Michael Jackson interview as examples of what a superstar journalist he was.
So we have been disappointed to learn how he secured that interview with Princess Diana over the last few years.
And I am frustrated when I reread some of Prince William's words in this book and how passionate and devastated he was over the deception.
And then to see Prince Harry turn in May 2025 and sit down with the BBC to talk to them about his security issues.
To me, it's a lack of loyalty to his deceased mother.
Yeah, I mean, look, Casey, I'm a big fan of the BBC for all its faults.
Me too, by the way.
I love waking up and listening to this paper.
It's a great institution.
Right.
And it's got a unique institution where we pay for it, right?
I mean, whether that business model can sustain to the younger generation, I think, is a different argument.
I think they kind of have to wake up and realize young people will not pay the license fee.
And that's going to be a different question.
But, you know, there's so much great about the BBC.
But the Trump thing was a massively self-harming thing that happened, which put it on the world stage.
But this, to me, was way more insidious.
This was way more deceptive.
Because of what Andy's saying, because they knew what was going on.
And even when they knew, they didn't then intervene when they could have done and said, there has been an epic cock-up essentially here.
We've got this wrong and we're sorry.
And I think when you reread those comments, as Kinsey was saying from William and also from Harry, I mean, listen, I don't agree with her in that he shouldn't have given an interview to the BBC.
I actually think it's right that they move on.
This is our public broadcaster and he could give the interview to them.
When they covered his wedding, for example, right?
They are the national broadcasters at the beginning.
Absolutely.
But when you hear them talk about the, you know, the huge traumatic impact it's had on them.
And of course, for those boys, even as men now and fathers themselves, to know that something like this could have changed their course of history and fate, I think is, you know, is really challenging.
Of course, you know, for us as broadcasters, it plays into that self-doubt, duplicitous news gathering, deceit, all of things that are not helpful from our position and frankly should have been dealt with.
Well, you know, I had this lunch with Diana two hours with her and Prince William in 96, so about a year after this interview.
And at that stage, she stood by everything she'd said.
But what was clear was it had a dramatic impact on how she wanted to lead her life going forward.
And she was talking about being free and working out who she could trust and couldn't trust everything.
And that was all completely delusional because it was based on a false self-sufficient by this top BBC guy.
I'm slightly less comfortable about the sort of direct line that people, including you, have drawn between what happened with that interview and her death.
I'm not.
I think it's quite clear.
Well, Piers, it's a time-loint editor, but we could equally say, oh, you know, all the machinations and the illegal ways in which the newspaper is.
Sure, you can say whatever you want, but the market.
You can say what you want.
But the bottom line is she was not being driven by a royal protection officer driver, right?
And if she had been, there wouldn't have been a drunk French driver at the wheel speeding into an underpass that killed her.
So the point being, the consequences of that interview included the removal of royal protection guys because she didn't trust them because she'd been told by Bashir they're all on the take, including the drivers.
So she would have had a royal protection driver who are the best in the world, right?
That is too interesting.
So when you say there's no line, they're right there is one clear line.
But there's 18 months between that Godforsaken interview and her death.
A long time for a highly paranoid, very suspicious, understandably so given the way in which everyone was preying on her.
A long time for someone to get in there and feed her false information or to exaggerate and refuel that paranoia.
I don't think we can park her death at the hands of the BBC.
I feel highly uncomfortable about drawing a line.
Well, I'm afraid I think we absolutely can park a lot of target at the BBC on this, generally.
I mean, it's an absolute disgrace.
Can I just, how different do you think her life would have been if there'd have been a deputation from Broadcasting House to Kensington Palace?
They said, look, I'm totally sorry, Your Royal Highness.
Yeah.
Toby sorry.
It would appear that one of our guys, can't explain, but he's a liar, he's a forger, da-da-da.
I'm terribly sorry, Your Royal Highness.
Now, at that point, a whole other can of worms would have been open.
And a new person.
I agree.
By which time she's already publicly platformed all that she wanted to say, including Charles not being fit to be king.
It would have been very hard, hard for her to peddle back and rebuild relationships with the royal family.
Andy, what has happened to Martin Bashir?
Well, he cannot work.
But he went on like sick leave when this all blew up.
Yeah, absolutely.
He was not actually sacked by the BBC at all for this.
Right.
But no, he lives.
I only say he lives in the south of England because why pennant it more?
But anyway, he lives in a very, very pleasant market town in the south of England, cannot get work.
Charities don't want him to have a blah, And he potters around.
But what he did was criminal.
Well, let's put it this way.
If using forged bank statements to win literally a £1.2 million interview, if that's...
It appears that's not criminal.
But it is obviously fraud, right?
I mean, so I'm just curious what will happen.
It seems amazing that he's never really been held properly accountable for it.
But it's a fantastic book.
I mean, really fascinating.
Having lived through a lot of it as an editor and talked to Dinah a lot through that period.
It's really interesting, the timeline and remembering what she was telling me at the time and then reading here why she felt these things.
And it's just so shocking.
I wanted to switch gears.
I want to talk about someone who likes to pretend she's the new diner, which always makes me laugh.
Our old friend, the Duchess of Sussex.
Let's start, Katie, with this probably hilariously, of all the revelations I've seen about Megan Markle recently, the one from the Harper's Bazaar interview, where she does this sort of weirdly stark cover.
But it's one of the quotes in there, which is that she, this is, I'll read what the Harper's Bazaar journalist said, that when I enter, the house manager announces Megan Duchess of Sussex, even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house.
I mean, there's that moment alone, right?
The utter delusion of this person.
Yeah, it's a very grand and frankly unnecessary introduction.
You know, when you particularly consider, and you know, the many times I met Harry, he never wanted to be, you know, the Duke of Sussex or Prince.
He just was like, call me Harry.
But of course, with Megan, it's not the same.
And, you know, she capitalizes on that title as often as she can, whether it's promoting her Netflix series or letter writing or whatever it might be.
So on the one hand, you've got this woman on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.
I have to say, I think she looks incredibly beautiful.
It's a stunning shoot.
I love the sort of minimalist makeup look.
I like this idea, this message that she's sending out about being sort of perfectly imperfect and knocking herself down a little bit, which I think people have probably been keen to see.
But the whole thing is undone by that anecdote at the start by the journalist revealing this fascinating detail.
But also introduce that.
Also, Kenzie, bring Kenzie back here.
She also says in the interview, I like the community of work and the connection.
I think a lot of it is in my DNA.
This is the same Duchess of Sussex who fled actually work with the British community for which she gets her title of Duchess of Sussex, doesn't do any official royal duties at all, but resides in California, where she was from, and makes literally hundreds of millions of dollars trading off her royal status without doing anything for it.
I mean, that to me is just blatant hypocrisy again, and has been the cornerstone of my criticism of the pair of them since they left, which is it's fine.
If you want to leave, fine, leave the royal family.
It's no problem.
You don't have to be.
We don't have a holding gun to your head.
But what you can't do is trash the royal family, trash the monarchy on every platform you can get your hands on and trade at the same time off your royal status and titles, including being introduced as you walk into a private home as Megan, the Duchess of Sussex.
It's all baloney.
Well, I think that this is the perfect opportunity for me to ask you where I can send you my gift, my as-ever cookies for you this Christmas.
Somebody sent me a bottle of the wine as a joke, and it was completely, I am a bit of a wine connoisseur.
It was to say it was the opposite of a chateau la tour would be the understatement of the millennium.
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Well, you're right.
I believe that in certain cases, I mean, she's doing this cover of a magazine, Harper's Bazaar, to promote her commercial businesses and utilizing the title, which I think, if you get down to the nitty-gritty, violates the Sandringham Agreement that they won't utilize their royal titles to pursue commercial ventures.
You know, because she's shilling jam inside that article.
It really, she doesn't focus on her Netflix opportunities.
She's really just focused on the product.
But I understand what she's trying to do with the Harper's Bazaar interview, but I still think as we wrap up 2025, that the article that really solidifies who the Sussexes are is American Hustle by Vanity Fair, which came out in February, where they stress how difficult these two are to work with and to collaborate with, Harry's lack of work ethic, and Megan's unrealistic expectations.
I think he smokes a lot of dope is what I hear.
Shifting Royal Landscape00:07:14
He's just permanently doped out, which if I was married to her, I probably would too.
Tessa, you're the great defender of the Duchess of Sussex.
I actually am less a defender of the Duchess of Sussex.
I prefer rather to critique you.
What's that going to do with it?
Because you introduced this entire segment, this show, putting Megan in the same category as Andrew Manba.
Oh, I did.
Yes, you did.
I did.
You can go back and read that.
Yes, you said Megan on Fallen Royals and then you're going to be a little bit different.
No, it's three different royal stories.
And sorry, in the same way.
All very different.
All linked by the fact they're all royals, right?
Let me be crystal clear about the difference.
The Andrew scandal is infinitely worse, in my estimation, than anything that Megan and Harry have come up with.
Thank you for clarifying that.
By comparison, they are annoying gnats on the tapestry of the royal family who constantly yap away for money and cause a lot of damage in their own way, but nothing like the damage of Andrew and the Epstein scandal.
So glad we've clarified that.
Okay.
Now, as for her spread in Harper Bazaar, which apparently was five years in the making, and I'm not surprised because she got literally cut up by the cut, and everywhere she goes, people diss her and turn her words around.
Of course, she's going to performatively.
Why does somebody who wants privacy do magazine covers?
Oh, for God's sake, she's flogging a product.
And incidentally, love the honesty.
Love the honesty.
She's flogging a product.
Yeah, so she doesn't really want privacy.
Just wants to use it.
Sell the privacy when you can make money.
On her own terms, Piers.
You like public attention if it's on your terms and promotes your show.
You don't want someone doorstepping you.
You don't want someone phone hacking you.
You don't want someone selling you forged banknotes to get you to do an interview.
Let's just be clear.
There's appropriate publicity and inappropriate publicity.
And we probably.
There's also blatant hypocrisy.
Andy, just want to switch to Andrew for a moment, who's clearly now been pretty well expunged from oil or royal status.
But what's your view of that, of the Andrew scandal?
You've obviously been immersed in the royal world with this book, but how damaging do you think that has been to the royal family and the monarchy?
Obviously, I mean, honestly, Danny, for what it's worth, the author of the Andrew book that just came out, Andrew Loney.
Yeah, we had him on here.
Yeah, well, Andrew is actually my agent.
He's also a literary agent and he's a great writer.
So, you know, talk to him.
I mean, to be honest, Piers, I want to kind of stay in my lane on this because my view on Andrew, I'm the bloke in the pub.
You know what I mean?
I think I know a lot about this one.
And of course, he's a dreadful, dreadful human being.
And Sarah Ferguson, you know, what excuse is there?
That's what I think.
But, you know.
Fair enough.
Katie, I mean, look, I do think it's been a drip, drip, drip scandal.
The most damaging part of it was the leaks from the Epstein files, which keep coming thick and fast.
Established he was lying in that interview with another big royal interview, the one with Emily Maitlis, in which he lied about the timeline.
He stayed in touch with Epstein, as did Sarah Ferguson, a lot longer than they told the world they had.
But he lied about the picture.
He tried to cast out of the picture.
Epstein, in his own words, confirms that picture was taken.
And so on and so on and so on.
So once you know he's lying about those two things, you can pretty well assume he's probably lying about other stuff and probably lying then about the relationship he had with Virginia Dufray, which he's always denied having, despite giving her $12 million to someone he claims he never met.
So the whole thing stinks to high heaven and probably has a way to run.
We haven't seen all the emails yet, right?
So who knows who else gets dragged in?
We saw Peter Mandelson, the US ambassador for the UK.
He had to resign because of emails from Misleek.
So there might be others caught up in this.
But it's been someone asked me from Australia actually today about the royal family and where they are with everything.
It's very hard to think, even in the Dina years, of a more turbulent period than this since Dinah's death.
That was a one-off shocking thing.
This has been a series from Prince Philip's death, the Queen's death, the King getting cancer, Harry and Meghan leaving, getting cancer, the Sussexes leaving and trashing them.
And then the Andrew Epstein scandal engulfing all of that in terms of severity.
It's been an incredibly difficult five, six years of them.
Well, look, I mean, I've done this now for nearly 17 years.
And, you know, every time I think it's about to go quiet, that as you say, something huge happens.
So it certainly keeps us busy.
But I think, you know, in terms of Andrew and what next, I think, you know, the king is very aware that this is far from over.
I think by having him sort of in royal exile, as it were, at Sandringham, he's out of the way, but close enough for the king to keep an eye on him.
And I reported in Vanity Fair this week, it's got a lot of pickup about Beatrice and Eugenie being sort of slowly eked out into the public eye as a way of testing the water by the king to see if they can do something.
They should not be targeted for the sins of the kingdom.
And they should not.
I really feel that I know them both well.
But why do they both get free grace and favour houses?
Why?
If their father is...
Because they're members of the royal family.
But their father isn't a prince.
They're princesses.
Because if you have a royal family, they should live in palatial homes.
Okay, Tessa, they also do ad hoc royal work.
And the point is, you're talking about this sort of shifting landscape of the royal family.
I mean, we all know that Charles wanted a slimmed down monarchy when he came to the throne, but had no expectation it would be the sort of anorexic looking property that it technically is.
So there may well be a need for Beatrice and Eugenie.
But I think they're all very well aware that the Andrew problem is far from behind them and they remain on highlight.
We're not going to see him at Christmas.
We're not going to see him out in public.
But if Congress opens these files and they're made public, like you say, you know, if the truth comes out, then there's big problems for the people.
Well, I want to bring Kinsey back in because Kinsey, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has called for Andrew to cooperate with the investigation.
And that inevitably would mean he would give evidence under oath, which he shows no sign of wanting to do.
But is there a clamour for that in America?
Do people in America feel that he should do that?
They do.
But my argument is, to your point, we can't, when can we trust this man?
When is he honest with us?
Do we believe that he would get on a stand or sit in a private office and tell these people the truth?
I'm not going to rally for it because I just don't think that it's in his best interest.
So I don't think he would do that.
I think that if he was forced to testify or to sit down with anyone, I'm not necessarily sure he would be honest, or I think he'd use every power he had to plead a fifth or whatever he was in the position to do.
I just don't trust that he would be honest with our lawmakers.
All right, Tessa, final words.
It's worth bearing in mind that Gillene Macfer, one of the reasons why she's in prison at the moment is because she lied under oath.
So on Andrew's headbeat, if he chooses to do that.
And incidentally, you refer to him in Sandringham.
To my knowledge, he's still in the Royal Lodge.
Right.
Yeah, Hitman, he will be moving.
He will be.
All right, we're going to leave it there.
Andy Webb's book, Diana Rama, The Betrayal of Princess Diana, highly recommend that.
As Charles Spencer says, an important and forensic examination.
And as Patrick Jefferson, the former private secretary to the Princess Diana, said, a story we're never supposed to read.
Andrew's Potential Perjury00:00:41
He had to leave working for her after many years as a most trusted employee because of Martin Bashir's lies, which wreaked absolute havoc.
And I do think there's a line from there to that Paris underpath.
So Andy, a great book.
Thanks for coming in.
Appreciate it.
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