38 Saturday April 30 2022 | the timesNewsSaturday interview
sensitive territory. And I was
absolutely torn. If I ask it, what would
he say? And would I have to press the
point? If I don’t ask, I’ll be attacked
for wimping out. I frankly wished I
didn’t have to do it. I never regarded
that as a scoop. The only scoop that I
believe I really had was to uncover a
famine in 1973 in Ethiopia.”
The year after the prince
programme, the Princess of Wales
gave her own TV interview to Martin
Bashir, whose lies to secure the
interview were detailed in a report by
Lord Dyson last year that also found
the BBC had covered up his deceit.
“He clearly lied and cheated his
way to the interview and that was
disgraceful .”
The Dyson report documented how
Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, was
told by Bashir that his sister was being
betrayed by friends, bugged and
tracked. Among Bashir’s “evidence”
were forged bank statements and one
of the wild claims he made to Spencer
was that Dimbleby had paid Richard
Aylard, Charles’s private secretary.
Two years after the interview the
princess, unsure who to trust and
outside the protective royal bubble,
died in a Paris car crash. The Duke of
Cambridge said after the DysonJonathan Dimbleby at his home in‘I suspect Harry is led by the nose
Jonathan Dimbleby, a friend of Charles, is scathing
about the duke’s behaviour — and he’s no fan of
Boris Johnson either, he tells Damian Whitworth
J
onathan Dimbleby has known
the Prince of Wales since he
coaxed a confession of
adultery out of him three
decades ago. Today he is an
ardent supporter and staunch
defender and has particularly robust
views on the Duke of Sussex, whose
rift with his father shows no sign ofhealing. After the Duke and Duchess
of Sussex made a flying visit to see
the Queen, Harry said that he was
“making sure she’s protected and has
got the right people around her.”
Dimbleby is scathing of this in a way
no palace courtier could dare to be in
public. “So you’ve swanned in to
check that the people who are veryclose to her are the right people?” he
says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Thank you very much. I mean, your
wisdom, Harry, is well worth it, I have
no doubt. And now you’re zooming
out again.”
Dimbleby says that the claims in
the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah
Winfrey, that a member of the royal
family had “concerns” about how
dark their baby’s skin might be, were
unfair. The Sussexes made it clear
through Winfrey that neither the
Queen nor Prince Philip made the
comment. “Who the hell was itsupposed to be? That is the
wickedness of it: it allows you to
speculate. You rule out the Queen,
you rule out the Duke of Edinburgh.
So who would it be?” Dimbleby says.
“And why do you make such a smear?
I thought that interview was, to put it
kindly, the most ghastly error of
judgment on their part.”
He is not privy to the details of the
rift between Harry and his father, but
Charles “would have been extremely
frustrated and saddened and possibly
angry at the thought that either he or
Meghan would believe that he in any
way had a racist attitude.
“I know the man. I have known
him for 30 years. You go into the
streets of any inner city in this
country with the Prince of Wales, the
first people to greet him really
warmly are young black people,
because they have experienced the
consequences of the work that has
been done through the Prince’s Trust.
So it is an unspeakable libel, actually.”
The former Any Questions
presenter met Harry when he made
his 1994 film about the Prince of
Wales that included the famous
interview. “I suspect that Harry is led
by the nose by Meghan Markle. He’s
entering a sort of vortex in which
they will become less and less
significant as a couple. As she gets
older, as he gets older, they will
matter less because the celebrity on
which they trade will become less
valuable. And it’s a very great shame
because when I met him, he was
absolutely charming; a lovely, lovely
young guy. Not the brightest in the
world but filled with generosity of
spirit.”
Is the Prince of Wales a friend?
“Yes,” he says, then pauses to consider.
“I am chary of the ‘friend’ label. But
do I rate him highly and do I have
affection for him? Very much so. I’m a
monarchist by default. I think it’s a
prison. I’d loath to live in it.”
Dimbleby has fiercely defended
Charles over allegations of a cash-for-
honours scandal at the Prince’s
Foundation. A Scotland Yard
investigation is centred on the role of
Michael Fawcett, his former valet,
who quit as chief executive last year
after claims that a Saudi billionaire
who donated £1.5 million was
promised help in securing a
knighthood. Norman Baker, a former
Liberal Democrat minister, said it was
“inconceivable” that Charles was not
aware of the arrangement.
“I bet you that there will have to be
an apology given for that inference. It
is to me inconceivable that he did
know about it. He’s at the apex of a
system which relies on people going
through proper processes,” he says.S
o does Charles sometimes
have the wrong people around
him? “Who’s to judge what is
right, and what is wrong,
except with the wonderful
benefit of hindsight.”
Their association began with
Charles: The Private Man, the Public
Role, filmed over two years and
accompanied by a biography written
by Dimbleby. The prince told him he
was faithful in his marriage to the
Princess of Wales “until it became
irretrievably broken down”.
That scoop, which is still constantly
referenced three decades on, will
almost certainly be mentioned in the
first paragraph of his obituary. “That
for me, if there is an afterlife, which I
doubt, will be the most tiresome and
boring fact.”
He found the business of asking
about the prince’s private life
distasteful. “I knew it was extremely