On Tuesday 8th November last week, BBC2 broadcast Arena - congratulating itself on the Princess Diana Panorama interview ten years on - and rebroaddcast the actual Bashir/Diana interview later that same evening.

The puff on the Arena programme was that this was a great piece of journalism and that the interview was painstakingly researched and sought after. Various BBC Panorama personnel were interviewed, giving their side of the story - how exactly wassuch a coup won? Steve Hewlett, then Editor of Panorama, was interviewed and spoke at length.

No-one watching the programme would have known a little known fact about the arrangements for the interview - details of which appear in Richard Lindley's important book on Panorama - that Diana's agreement to be interviewed was secured by the use of forged bank documents. Basically, forged details of an assassination plot against her were shown to Diana and it was these documents that influenced her into agreeing to the Bashir interview. Panorama later forged further documents in the programmes relating to Terry Venables and were sued accordingly.

Notes from the Borderland made these points, about Hewlett, about forgeries, when we intervened in a meeting (an interview between Hewlett and BBC DG Mark Thompson at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival) in Sheffioeld recently. Copies are available if you contact us at our website at www.borderland.co.uk