The infamous Princess Diana television interview in 1995 which rocked the monarchy just got more scandalous 25 years later as BBC reporter Martin Bashir is accused of falsifying evidence to gain access to her. Her brother the Earl Spencer says bank accounts were forged to appear to show courtiers were being paid to give information on Diana to the security services; and tales were spun about the young princes’ nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, hinting she was having an affair with Charles. All of which would feed into Diana’s paranoia. She agreed to do the interview since she thought it would concentrate on her charity work but she was seduced/provoked into making inflammatory comments about her marriage and Charles’ unfitness to be king.
Bashir, born 19 January 1963 12.30pm London (time from astrotheme), has had a chequered career here and in the USA with several slips and mishaps along the way but has finally, bizarrely, ended up as BBC Religious Affairs correspondent. He is at present unwell with coronavirus. He has a late Capricorn Sun with an intense and elusive Moon Neptune in Scorpio squaring onto Saturn in his 10th opposition Mars in Leo – he’ll be attracted to glamour and publicity and be tricky to pin down with such a Neptune. He also has a pushily-confident Jupiter opposition Pluto Uranus square Venus in Sagittarius – has great charm though lacks emotional depth, can be superficial.
His Saturn in the 10th is interesting – Sakoian & Acker remark: “Those with Saturn in this house must exercise extreme caution concerning principles, or disgrace and heavy karmic debts may be incurred. A great price must be paid for infraction of the universal law.” In shorthand, cutting corners always comes back to bite.
Diana’s synastry with Bashir was explosive with his Mars conjunct her Uranus and his Uranus conjunct her Mars – they spurred each other on to an unhealthy level of excitement and risk. His Capricorn Sun conjunct her Saturn were both being rattled by the highly strung tr Uranus in Capricorn (conjunct tr Neptune). Tr Neptune was also square Princess Diana’s Midheaven hinting at her confusion about her life’s direction. The transiting Jupiter Venus Mars in Sagittarius was also just over her Ascendant moving through her 1st giving her a rush of confidence.
The other Royals were less enlivened. The Queen had the tr Uranus Neptune crossing her Capricorn Ascendant and tr Pluto at zero degrees Sagittarius in her 10th inconjunct her Sun – it put immense strain on her and damaged her image. Prince Charles had tr Pluto inconjunct his 10th house Moon, which would rattle his career path considerably. Prince William also had the quincunx stress factor with tr Pluto inconjunct his Cancer Sun, and moving to conjunct his Uranus; and tr Neptune Uranus square his Pluto and trine his Venus. For Harry it was less of a career-defining moment and more of an emotional setback with tr Saturn in Pisces square his Mars and moving to oppose his Sun. With tr Neptune trine his Sun and tr Pluto inconjunct his Pluto.
The BBC is now in the frame for whitewashing the affair. Bashir always was a gritty fit since his Saturn in Aquarius is conjunct the BBC’s Mars and his Mars and Uranus Pluto fall in the BBC’s 4th – but his confident Jupiter falls in the BBC 10th so maybe they reckoned his pluses outweighed his minuses, until now. The BBC doesn’t have its troubles to seek at the moment, a great many of them self-inflicted and the Bashir interview may loom as significant problem next year with tr Uranus square tr Saturn hitting on the BBC Mars as well as Bashir’s Saturn.
After she died Ann Leslie, the Daily Mail journalist remarked that Diana had signed a pact with the devil when she used the media to gain attention and pursue her vendettas about feeling badly treated. It’s never a deal that ends well.
Years ago I made documentaries for the BBC for four years after 11 years in commercial television and the biggest cowboys I ever worked with were in the BBC. Coming from what was supposedly the vulgarian younger cousin it was quite a culture shock having to grapple with the arrogant amour propre that pervaded Broadcasting House and all corners. The BBC does engender extraordinary loyalty but there was every bit as much wrong as right in the hallowed corridors and no DG has ever really managed to sort out the core problems.
Another BBC story. Just after I joined in 1979 I was loosely affiliated to the national election team and had set up two TV sets in the green room beaming out BBC and ITN output for politicos and notables in for interview to show how superior my new bosses were. Only to watch in acute horror as the BBC effort collapsed into a complete shambles. They had thrown so much money around and had remote locations in so many different places the technology couldn’t cope and the whole thing more or less ended up in a heap on the floor. Whereas ITN ran a much tighter operation with the blessed Diana Edwards-Jones in charge (no doubt cursing and swearing like a trooper) and it ran like clockwork and they got all the results up first.
Yet somehow the Beeb always maintained this aura of being the gold standard.
Tom Mangold in D Mail about Martin Bashir:
‘I had always liked him after he had come up to me when he first joined the programme and told me: ‘Sorry to trouble you, Tom, but I just wanted to say, sadly my brother died last week, and on his deathbed he said to me, ‘Martin, when you get to Panorama, follow everything Tom Mangold does. Listen to him, learn from him, write like him, become him, and you’ll be as great as he has become’.’
I was deeply touched. As was Mike Nicholson of ITV, when Martin told him exactly the same story (but substituting Mike’s name), and the BBC’s John Humphrey … and heaven knows how many others.’
Martin using a story like that, in that way is just shameless, and yet – not surprising. Ugh.
What a very sickening anecdote about Martin Bashir. I’m wondering about his Mercury conjunct the South Node – the December Saturn and Jupiter conjunction is right there. A mix of “fate”, law, and communication/journalism in focus for him? If the time is right, then Saturn would be crossing the MC as well, bringing extra responsibility/burdens or possibly chickens coming home to roost? Jupiter might soften that, or simply expand Saturn’s themes.
On another note, I have to heap an awful lot of the blame for Brexit upon the BBC.
As the so called ‘state broadcaster’, supposedly adhering to the Reithian ideals of to ‘educate, inform and entertain’, and having more or less the exclusive entry into literally millions of UK living rooms, the BBC could have lived up to its supposed mission and used its monopoly and privilege to *educate* British TV viewers – who in many cases are typically insular and parochial – about the *lives and way of life* of Continental European *people*, in the form of prime time fly-on-the-wall style travelogue documentaries screened at prime time – in particular I’m thinking of that 1970s series ‘The Yugoslav Way’.
The idea is that the whole point of the EU was that continental Europeans were *one people* with the British, and despite the cultural differences, which certain kinds of Britons sneer at, or find off putting, their lives, hopes, struggles etc are really the same. In this, the BBC had an enormous opportunity to educate and inform, and even entertain, in a very fruitful topic which was close to the political destiny of Britain.
Instead, they devoted prime time TV to utter shit such as EastEnders and Masterchef.
Martin using a story like that, in that way is just shameless, and yet – not surprising. Ugh.
Sorry replied wrong comment!
I agree. The main BBC news did go through a long phase where they barely reported anything from Europe at all. That has improved slightly, but they mostly seem to focus on the US. I’ve been astonished by how little they have, in the past, reported major upsets in Europe – like storms, for instance – while going into intense detail about weather events in the States. If you listen to the World Service you hear news that never surfaces on TV at all.
The World Service was launched on 19 December 1932, and has Saturn at 2 Aquarius. It’s Saturn return awaits.
Just out of interest, Marjorie, can you tell us which TV programmes you were involved with, both for BBC and ITV?
As an aside, I find today’s terrestrial television – both BBC and ITV – to be completely unwatchable, to the extent where I simply cannot bring myself to endure watching the product. Pure, complete absolute garbage. Nothing but wall to wall trashy soap opera, game shows, unbelievable dumb and boring daytime shows and godawful cooking programmes/contests.
Nothing at all like the golden age of British television in the 1970s, where the name ‘Thames Television’ stands out proud.
Many Thanks.
BBC should stick to drama and documentaries. I never watch the rest of the bilge.
My long ago, pre-astro career:
BBC: TV Producer Network documentaries:
Four Seasons X 4: Birth, Marriage, Retirement and Death
Is Anybody There? X 5 Paranormal.
St Kilda
Sean Connery Profile
Politics of Poverty X 4
Oops nearly forgot – first year of TV Am, the breakfast show – and that was interesting – one way of putting it but certainly an eye-opener.
For STV:
Editor: 6 O’clock News, Current Affairs and Feature
Afternoon chat show and music.
Documentaries
Edinburgh Festival
I’m not a huge Michael Jackson fan. He was surely afflicted and had numerous faults.
But a lot of his fans suggest his Bashir interview was the beginning of his demise. I look back at that interview and find Bashir’s whole approach to Jackson unspeakably self-serving. It’s like Bashir couldn’t hide it. Not from people like me.
Since then I’ve always seen him as a snake. Your description of his Moon Neptune in Scorpio square Saturn in 10th made me smirk knowingly.
He’s a real Cowboy that one.
I’m not sure why Charles Spencer is digging this up now?
I always thought Diana came out of the interview fairly well respected by the British public. It was the moment when we found out all about her unhappiness, and of course “there were three in this marriage” comment hammered Charles.
To me, transiting Uranus hitting her natal Cap Saturn is the biggie of the interview chart. She broke free of all the expectations that society, especially the Royals, had put upon her. And it was very Uranian in its explosivity. She’d had the transit building all year and after that she was a lot more free.
“I’m not sure why Charles Spencer is digging this up now?”
Marjorie did a post on how him some time ago, he is in therapy and wrote a memoir or something recently. I think this is good for him, since he has several children, some of whom are still young (two teens and one 8-year-old) and his own father was a dysfunctional person.
Otherwise, I find this is all bit of the “same old, same old” and really a debunk of Anna Karenina’s first line, since apparently, superpriviledged unhappy families tend to be unhappy in a same way 150 years later.