The final “regret” Diana, Princess of Wales had for her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, has emerged in a new interview. Before her tragic death in August 1997, Diana took a holiday to Greece with her close friend, Rosa Monckton, and reportedly opened up about her feelings on her controversial BBC Panorama interview.

The now-infamous sit-down from 1995 has been the source of controversy in recent years, following an examination of the circumstances behind how Martin Bashir secured the interview. The explosive chat not only saw Diana address the then-Prince Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles – using the famous phrase, “there were three of us in this marriage”, but also questioned her husband’s suitability to be King.

Monckton’s new claim about the late Princess involves Diana’s fears for how the interview affected her two young sons.

Speaking to PEOPLE Magazine, Ms Monckton said: “She told me she regretted doing it because of the harm she thought it had done to her boys.”

She went on: “She was frail, and that made her susceptible to Bashir”, adding that the fact that Diana “kept it all in” didn’t help her. “He’d told her she couldn’t talk about it. She cut people out because of that,” she added.

The scandal surrounding how Bashir got the Princess to sit down with him has been a source of huge embarrassment. His downfall began in 2020 when the BBC’s former director-general, Tim Davie, was forced to apologise to the Princess’s brother, Earl Spencer, for Bashir’s use of fake bank statements.

The journalist then stepped down as the BBC’s religion editor in 2021, citing health reasons, shortly before former Justice of the Supreme Court, Lord Dyson, published his report into the scandal.

The independent inquiry had been welcomed by Prince William and found Bashir used “deceitful behaviour” in a “serious breach” of the BBC’s producer guidelines to secure his interview. He also deemed Earl Spencer to be a “credible witness”, but there were “significant parts of Mr Bashir’s account I reject as incredible, unreliable and, in some cases, dishonest”.

Prince William later said the interview fueled his mother’s “fear, paranoia and isolation.” He said: “It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation. She was failed not just by a rogue reporter but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way.

“It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again.”