Timeline of the scandal that shames TV chiefs

November 20, 1995: Martin Bashir’s sensational Panorama interview with Princess Diana is aired on BBC1 in a scoop that goes around the world.

April 7, 1996: The Mail on Sunday reveals that Bashir used fake bank statements to persuade Diana that people close to her had been paid to spy on her, fuelling her paranoia. The BBC claimed Earl Spencer had not been shown the statements, which was untrue.

1999: Bashir moves from the BBC to ITV.

September 2016: Despite longstanding rumours about Bashir’s methods, he is rehired by the BBC and later becomes religious affairs editor.

October 19, 2020: The BBC releases a 67-page dossier of memos to journalist Andy Webb which detail its botched internal investigation into Bashir in 1996. But some incriminating documents are omitted.

November 7, 2020: The Daily Mail reveals how Earl Spencer has 37 pages of handwritten notes which exposed, for the first time, the lies Bashir peddled to land his scoop.

May 14, 2021: In a damning report, Lord Dyson, a former Supreme Court judge, says Bashir engaged in ‘deceitful behaviour’ and the BBC ‘covered up’ what it knew.

December 2023: Judge Brian Kennedy orders the BBC to disclose large numbers of emails bosses sent in 2020, when the scale of Bashir’s deceit emerged.