Guido’s cartoonist Rich Johnston was in the audience for the Have I Got News for You show recording yesterday, he reports that:

“There was some confusion about when the new Panorama investigation into the Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana was or wasn’t being broadcast, having to talk in the past, present or future tenses, as the show was recorded the day before transmission, but Ian Hislop made one of the more nuanced analyses over Diana and the culpability of Bashir, reminding us that at the time, Diana had, without attribution, already written the book of her life with Andrew Morton, that was going to do a TV interview with someone anyway, and that she had writers prepare lines such as “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded” – she didn’t write those herself. Bashir’s actions, basically, pushed him to the top of the queue.”

Essentially, according to Hislop, Bashir may have forged and bluffed his way into getting the interview, however what she said and the consequences that followed were of her own making, contrary to what Prince William asserted in his statement last night. Will be interesting to see if Hislop’s comments make it past the edit into the broadcast version of the BBC show tonight. Will it be a case of “We Haven’t Got News for You?”