diana is feeling very vulnerable. it s the first time that she s actually feeling that she s losing the support of the public. as well as being sidelined and undermined by charles supporters. diana continues, i ve been battered, bruised and abused mentally by a system for 15 years now. i m weary of the battles, but i will never surrender. she felt she really needed to put her case directly to the public. everyone wanted to get an interview or sit-down with princess diana. this was the biggest tv interview you could get. this was the ultimate get. some of the top names in both america and britain were angling for diana to sit on a couch, notably oprah winfrey, barbara walters, clive james in britain, david frost, really big hitters. what s remarkable is how she ended up in the clutches of panorama with martin bashir,
did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage? yes. until it became irretrievably broken down. there was this bombshell confession that, yes, he had been unfaithful with camilla parker bowles. it s not something that i went into marriage with the intention of this happening. or in any way in a cynical frame of mind. i mean, i charles clearly was fighting against it. you could see it with every sort of inflection, every move of his body. because it reflected not just on him and, of course, camilla, but also on diana. it must have been so incredibly hard for her to hear those words. but if she refused to simply sit at home when a documentary goes out in which she s represented as the cheated-on wife diana, she has a public engagement that night. she reached into her closet, she grabbed a tight, black dress.
will colin was a former england rugby star, and diana met him at the gym they both attended. colin has reported to upset his wife but has so far not commented on the break-up. although diana denied they had a relationship, their friendship was blamed for the breakdown of carling s marriage. carling s wife julia came out fighting and in the process trashed the princess. diana was called a home wrecker. these stories gave rise to a lot of questions about why she couldn t find someone who was unattached, why she kept going after married men. her choices and her behavior were the subject of intense public scrutiny. it s an absolute double standard. i mean, charles didn t have the same scrutiny that diana was now enduring. diana knew that her leverage, the source of her power, was her popularity with the public. she felt she was in danger of losing it for the first time.
so even though diana was free by this point, she was still just as lonely. she was finding it extremely difficult to form relationships outside the glare of the publicity that surrounded her. one of the most damaging episodes in diana s life came when a newspaper discovered that she d been making a series of almost obsessive phone calls to an oliver hall, a friend of both hers and prince charles with whom she had been conducting an affair. she spoke to me that night about it, and she realized she d made a big mistake. she was very in love with him. but he was married. he wasn t going to leave his wife. she was trying to find love and affection, but she was looking in all the wrong places.
all she had to do is step out of the car. the conversation could have been around, poor diana. but here she was, looking like a million bucks. she reclaimed her power with that dress, with that moment. i think of how many women have channelled that in their own lives, and what a splash it made. charles admission confirms diana s truth, and the royal family can no longer deny it. the royal family itself found it deeply offensive and hated the fact that here was another member of the family airing dirty linen in public. charles and diana were caught in a cycle of tit for tat. when diana separated from charles, she was still only in her early 30s, and she was stunningly beautiful. there was so much interest in her every move. if she showed interest in anyone, they would immediately become a news story.