11 November 2024 , 16:57
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Princess Diana’s former chauffeur has insisted Princess Diana would still be alive if he hadn’t been ‘forced out’ of his job by claims he’d been plotting against her.
Steve Davies, 61, breaking a 30-year silence, said he was pushed to take redundancy in 1996 after disgraced BBC reporter Martin Bashir falsely told her he and others in her circle had been leaking information about her to the press.
Bashir didn’t make the claims public at the time but used them to lure her into giving her infamous Panorama interview.
Steve, who had driven the Princess for eight years, told the Mail on Sunday he ‘cannot put into words my grief when Diana was killed’ in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
He added: ‘All I know is that if life had taken a different trajectory, if I’d been driving her that night in Paris, she would still be here today because I would have kept her safe.’
‘I’d have taken a bullet for Diana. My job was my life. I was always there for her. I went from having the dream job to having to start again from scratch.’
But Steve wouldn’t discover the true reason he lost his job until decades later – thanks to Netflix drama The Crown – and was only awarded compensation from the BBC in May this year.
Steve ‘profoundly regrets’ that Diana died believing he’d betrayed her (Picture: Les Wilson / Mail on Sunday)
Diana’s Panorama interview, in which she first spoke candidly about her failed marriage to Charles, was an international sensation.
Months later it was reported that Bashir had used fake documents to persuade Diana’s brother, the Earl Spencer, that her former security chief had been taking money from a tabloid newspaper.
The BBC cleared Bashir after an internal investigation, saying he hadn’t used the documents to secure the interview, but an ITV documentary 25 years later reignited the controversy.
An independent inquiry in 2020 concluded the reporter had indeed used ‘deceitful methods’, including the fake papers, to secure the interview, and was highly critical of the BBC’s own investigation.
An independent inquiry concluded BBC reporter Martin Bashir used ‘deceitful methods’ to (Picture: NBCUniversal)
Prince Harry has said the manipulations contributed to his mum’s death (Picture: BBC)
Steve says his job was his ‘life’ and he was ‘always there for her’ (Picture: Rex)
The inquiry’s report mentioned handwriten notes Earl Spencer took after meeting with his sister and Bashir in 1995.
Steve ‘feeds [the] Today newspaper … change your chauffeur’, the Earl wrote in one note, referring to the now-defunct tabloid newspaper.
The Crown’s writers adapted the saga for the screen in series 5, in which Bashir (played by Prasanna Puwanarajah) tells Diana (played Elizabeth Debicki) his ‘MI6 contacts’ had ‘confirmed to me that your driver Steve Davies is also in on it’.
In shock Diana sits bolt upright and gasps: ‘Steve?’
Steve told the Mail he had never seen the show until his wife showed him a clip of the scene, sent to her by her daughter.
It prompted him to look more thoroughly into the matter and later sue the BBC for slander, winning damages and an apology in May this year.
The BBC accepted Bashir’s allegation ‘was and is totally false’ and ‘was likely to have caused HRH the Princess of Wales to doubt the claimant’s loyalty and professionalism’.
Lawyers for Steve told the court he had ‘maintained a close professional relationship with the princess throughout the many years he had worked for her and he was given no reason for the termination’.
Steve was ‘tormented’ by the loss of his job (Picture: Tim Graham)
He had been ‘acutely embarrassed’ about his dismissal and was ‘tormented’ by speculation around the possible reason for it, they added.
It was still a matter of ‘profound regret’ to Steve that, ‘as he now knows, the princess believed that he had betrayed her, and he was unable to correct the position before her tragic death’, the court heard.
Princes William and Harry have both condemned the BBC for its treatment of their mum and the corporation has promised not to air the Panorama interview again.