Six DGs and ditto prime ministers have presided since Diana told Martin Bashir “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”. The people most terminally embarrassed were probably, as intended, Camilla and Charles, the royal household and an ex-lover, James Hewitt. Her sizable collection of much older, male friends had urged her not to do it. “I said,” the late Clive James recalled, “if that happened the two-camps thing would go nuclear and continue until there was nothing left.”
But the princess was reportedly thrilled with her performance and the response: 92%, in one poll, backed her interview. Her in-laws, equally satisfactorily, were horrified. Camilla, according to one of Diana’s biographers, Sarah Bradford, laughed at the “Mad Cow”. “Bashir,” Burrell wrote later, “had tapped into the princess’s vengeful streak: at the time she wanted to get even with Prince Charles over his adultery confession in the Dimbleby documentary.” Bashir was rewarded with speechwriting duties.