Nicholas Witchell, the BBC’s royal editor, has revealed that he was told to “back off” from speaking to Diana, Princess of Wales in order to give Martin Bashir “a clear run”. It was Witchell, who was working for Panorama in 1995, who first mooted the idea of a televised interview and had arranged to meet the Princess to discuss the proposal before events took a different turn. He was forced to cancel two consecutive lunch meetings at Kensington Palace after being sent away on assignment and before it could be rescheduled, he was promoted to the role of diplomatic correspondent. Steve Hewlett, the editor of Panorama, took Witchell off the project and replaced him with Bashir. Witchell, who became the royal correspondent three years later in 1998, said he was told the matter had to be kept “secret from the Kensington Palace authorities”.