Diana: In Pursuit of Love by Andrew Morton

Author:Andrew Morton [Morton, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782431992
Amazon: 1782431993
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Published: 2013-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fakes, Forgeries and Secret Tapes

HE IS NOW one of the biggest names in television with a roll call of major interviews, a number of them controversial, to his credit. But when Martin Bashir joined the BBC’s flagship current-affairs programme, Panorama, in spring 1992, he was just a very small and unknown fish in a large pond teeming with big names.

Born in 1963, the son of an immigrant family (his parents had moved to Britain from Pakistan), Bashir had the drive to succeed, perhaps to over-achieve, typical of first-generation families. A troubled background – his father suffered from psychiatric problems and his brother died of muscular dystrophy – probably served only to strengthen his resolve, and he graduated with a top degree in English and History from the University of Southampton, even though, as he was fond of saying, the only book in their council home on a south London estate was the rent book. When he joined Panorama, Bashir, a former sports reporter, had a reputation as an ‘obsessional loser’, a Walter Mitty character chasing left-field ideas that rarely came to anything. In the predominantly white, middle-class milieu of the BBC, he was seen as an outsider and a loner. While he was respected as a smooth and clever operator he had, as the journalist Sonia Purnell commented in the Independent on Sunday, ‘barely made a name for himself in nine years at the BBC’.

One story is typical of his ingratiating charm, a potent and winning combination of flattery, humility – and make-believe. When he first joined Panorama he made a point of buttonholing Tom Mangold, doyen of investigative reporters, in the BBC bar in west London. Deferentially, he approached him and asked to shake the great man’s hand. He went on to tell him that when his brother Tommy was dying, one of his last wishes was that he, Martin, should emulate the veteran reporter whom, it went without saying, he considered to be the best in the world. Mangold, his ego stroked and heart strings pulled in equal measure by this touching story, immediately warmed to the rather lonely and forlorn figure. Mangold became more sceptical about a year later, when he was talking to John Humphrys, the grand inquisitor of Radio Four’s Today programme, at a party. Humphrys, it transpired, had had precisely the same conversation with Bashir – and so, at a different time, had the highly respected TV war correspondent, Michael Nicholson. As one BBC insider commented, ‘You’ve got to admire a guy like that. He’s out of Hollywood. It tells you everything you need to know about him.’

Behind the meek exterior was an ambitious journalist who was keen to make a name for himself. His previous two programmes, in 1993 and 1994, about the former England football manager Terry Venables and his financial dealings, had attracted attention as well as a libel writ from Venables who complained, as part of his case, about the use of fabricated financial documents. Bashir, who made the

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