| TV REVIEW: Diana, Panorama & "Auntie" |
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| Written by Joanne Leyland | |
| Saturday, 12 November 2005 | |
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 I hold my hands up. This week I sat down and did something a person should never do: I re-lived the past.I watched in full, for the first time in almost ten years, the BBC Panorama interview with 'H.R.H The Princess of Wales'. How I wish I hadn't... When I, like an astonishing 23 million more in Britain (and latterly millions more worldwide) first sat down to watch the historic and ultimately unforgettable interview on that dark November night in 1995, I came away thinking Diana was pretty amazing and pretty damn brave too. I mean, how many of us would dare take on the all-powerful 'Establishment' in the way she did? And so publicly too? And that Charles? Didn't he deserve this act of revenge after the way he'd behaved towards a woman who I genuinely believed did love him? My reaction ten years on, though? Well....I found the whole interview very tragic and very, very depressing. Maybe the latter sentiment is because we knew this time around that the young woman looking out at us with those enormous blue eyes was going to be dead within eighteen months. I'm not really one for the conspiracy theories but it was hard not to wonder whether we hadn't, a decade ago, unwittingly played witness to Diana signing her own death warrant as she struck out at one of the world's most significant (and most secretive?) institutions in the world? 
More than anything it was just terribly, terribly sad. The hopes of which the-then 34-year old Princess spoke never had time to manifest themselves. Her declaration that "I won't go quietly, I have a role to fulfil. And two children to bring up" was in equal vain. In fact, this sentence sent a shiver down the spine. "I won't go quietly"....doesn't that fit so perfectly with the conspiracy theories which run rampant to this day?  I couldn't help but ponder that, on Monday 20th November 1995 (ironically the Queen and Prince Philip's wedding anniversary), Sir John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC and a man who's presbyterian convictions ran deep, must have been flailing, let alone turning, in his grave. Surely this was not what he was thinking when he first unveiled the edict that continues to rule the British Broadcasting Corporation today, that is that it should "inform, educate and entertain"?! |
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