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Nicholas Witchell, the BBC’s long serving royal correspondent who was famously branded an “awful man” by King Charles on a hot mic, has said that it was he who first suggested to Princess Diana that she do her 1995 interview with the BBC and labelled his former colleague Martin Bashir, who ultimately landed the interview using underhand means, an “absolute blaggard.”
The BBC’s veteran royal correspondent, who is retiring this month, revealed in a farewell interview that he “was the person who put the idea” of doing the Panorama interview into Diana’s head, and added: “I was initially going to be the person to do the interview, and I was twice due to go and have lunch to discuss it with her, but at that stage I had been made aware that this absolute blaggard called Martin Bashir had entered the picture,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
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“At the time nobody had any reason to think that anything untoward was occurring. It always mystified me that he was able to get alongside her.”
A 2021 inquiry found that Bashir commissioned fake bank statements and used other underhand tricks to encourage Diana to do the interview by feeding her sense of paranoia.
Witchell also described being the first reporter to find out about Diana’s death in 1997. He was on an assignment in the Philippines with then foreign secretary, Robin Cook.
“We were eight hours ahead and we knew the accident had happened,” he told the Telegraph. “We were on the steps of the aircraft and one of Cook’s officials approached, ashen-faced and said: ‘She’s dead.’
“I phoned the BBC newsroom. I found it difficult to get the words out, I felt that if I said them, that’s it, this tsunami of news and grief begins. I kept saying: ‘The news from Paris, it’s going to be very grave.’ There was an Australian news editor at the end of the line who said: ‘For Christ’s sake, Nick, what are you trying to say?’ And I said, ‘Well, she’s dead.’”
In 2005, the-then Prince of Wales was caught on a hot mic making disparaging remarks about Witchell during a photoshoot in the Swiss Alps. He said: “Bloody people. I can’t bear that man. I mean, he is so awful, he really is.”
Witchell said of the incident: “It had all been pre-arranged and it was supposed to be an opportunity for the boys to publicly endorse the wedding. I was going to bowl the first question, as the BBC normally does, and that was supposed to then allow William and/or Harry to say, ‘Yeah, we’re really pleased about it all.’
“But it just went horribly wrong. People weren’t in the best of moods that morning. It sounds the most inane and pathetic question really: ‘How do you feel about the wedding?’ But if you sort of unpack that, as the then Prince of Wales immediately did… I could see that his face was somewhat changing colour.”
He says: “I was shocked, but to be perfectly honest, we all mutter under our breath, don’t we? I don’t think it did me any harm. I’ve been able to tell the story so I think I’ve done quite well out of it really… There are a number of people who think I’m an awful man, so why shouldn’t he?”
Witchell also discussed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the interview, saying. “I finished reading Spare with more sympathy and more understanding for him and for what he’s gone through than I had before. But he has misunderstood the idea that the media collude with the palace to do down members of the royal family. That’s just absurd.”
He added: “He wanted out and she provided him with that means of escape… A lot of people would say that he has let a lot of people down, but I think he has been affected by the tragedy of his mother’s death and I think, temperamentally, perhaps he wasn’t suited to that role.”
