Princess Diana's 1995 Panorama interview: BBC to donate sales proceeds worth $1.6 million to charity

The BBC has decided to donate the sale proceeds collected from the 1995 Panorama interview with Princess Diana. The total amount to be donated is £1.42 million ($1.6 million).

The amount will be split among seven charities, all linked to Princess Diana. Centrepoint, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, and the English National Ballet are to name a few.

The broadcasting corporation explained that the source of the money will be the BBC’s commercial revenue as they currently found out their reporter Martin Bashir provided fake documents to reach the late royal princess.


Currently, the money may not come from the license fee funds, which are under the review process of the UK government. The government has also threatened to cut it down altogether.

In 1995, the host Martin Bashir conducted the Panorama interview, which was also aired in the same year. There was a huge controversy over the interview as Bashir allegedly used forged documents.



Later on, while Lord Dyson conducted an independent investigation on the programme, he found out that the public broadcaster failed to meet the high standards of transparency and integrity, which are known as its hallmark.

This year, in July, the BBC issued a public apology to Princess Diana’s ex-husband Prince Charles and her sons, Prince Williams and Prince Harry. The broadcaster also contributed to some of those, who were previously targeted by Bashir’s ruse. Alexandra Pettifer, the princess’ former nanny was one of them. She is better known as Tiggy-Legge-Bourke. Another one is her whistleblower, Mark Killick.

Mark Killick exposed that Bashir made him forge the princess’s bank statements to reveal those closest to her. Her advisors were among the closest list, who were being paid for revealing her secrets. Bashir’s trickery triggered Princess Diana’s paranoia, which resulted in her forsaking the royal protection and eventually led to her fatal accident in 1997.