Any aspiring businessman will tell you that if someone offers you a deal that seems too good to be true, there's a very good chance that's because it isn't true. By the same token, experienced journalists around the world know that when a story sounds too sensational to be real, it's often because it's entirely made up. The people behind the British tabloid The Sun learned both lessons — one about business and the other about journalism — the hard way back in the mid-1990s.
The Sun had no fewer than 4 million loyal readers at the time, thanks in large part to its editors' knack for delivering a steady stream of sensational stories that caused trouble for Britain's rich, famous and beautiful. So when the newspaper's headlines announced in early October 1996 that its newsroom had obtained a steamy video featuring Princess Diana and her longtime lover, everyone simply assumed the scoop-hungry tabloid had finally landed the ultimate story.
The video, just 80 seconds long, purportedly showed Princess Diana undressing and embracing James Hewitt, her former riding instructor, whose name had previously been romantically linked to hers. By the time The Sun published its scoop, Diana was already divorced from Prince Charles. But the newspaper claimed the footage had been filmed five years earlier, while the couple was still married, and that the alleged affair had taken place at Prince Charles' country estate.
As you might imagine, The Sun's report quickly became the talk of Britain. Princess Diana had long been the ultimate prize for tabloids hungry for sensational stories, and so many paparazzi photographers had built their careers around pursuing her that they could probably have filled Buckingham Palace. That relentless pursuit of Diana would also play a major role in her death just a year later.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman issued a statement on Diana's behalf saying she did not recognize herself or Hewitt in the video, but the denial seemed too generic and terse to be convincing. It certainly didn't help that James Hewitt, the man supposedly featured in the footage, said he remembered the incident very well.
James Hewitt. His comments did little to bolster the denials
(Photo: Steve Finn/Getty Images)
The Sun even claimed the video supported allegations Diana herself had previously made that she had been subjected to malicious surveillance orchestrated by her husband, Prince Charles.
But all of this unfolded in just half a day. The Sun's sensational story about Diana and Hewitt lasted only 12 hours before its rival, the Daily Mirror, announced that it would reveal the truth behind the video the following morning.
But the truth came out even before the next morning. It quickly emerged that the people in the video were not Princess Diana and James Hewitt, but actors and models hired through a well-known London agency specializing in look-alikes of members of the royal family and their romantic partners.
Princess Diana. An unwitting target of the whole affair
(Photo: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
In fact, one British television station even broadcast the original recording, this time in color and close-up, to demonstrate how the footage had been manipulated to convince The Sun's staff that it was genuine.
It turned out that the 80-second video was simply an excerpt from a pilot episode of a satirical television series about the royal family, filmed several months earlier. The producers had hired an unknown actor named Gareth to play Hewitt, alongside two different models who had spent years earning a living from their resemblance to Princess Diana.
Christina Hance, 35, appeared in the first part of the video, while Nicky Lilley replaced her toward the end.
Lilley was quick to clarify that she, not Diana, was the woman performing the striptease in the video. Hance, meanwhile, expressed concern for the princess and her children. Having earned a living from her resemblance to Diana for 10 years, she said she did not want to cause the royal family any harm and felt compelled to set the record straight.
Nick Hedges, the director hired to shoot the television pilot, also sounded astonished by the extraordinary turn his footage had taken.
He revealed that the entire day's filming had cost just 650 pounds — roughly one-thousandth of what The Sun had paid for the video — and that the original idea was to shoot a comedy sketch featuring Diana and her lover supposedly being pursued by photographers.
That was also why Hedges himself had converted the footage from color to black and white and copied the tape several times to make it look like a poor-quality recording shot by a paparazzo from a distance using cheap equipment.
Hedges said he had not expected the sketch to be broadcast because, despite the performers' efforts, he felt the result was unconvincing.
Piers Morgan. Had the last laugh
(Photo: Getty Images)
Well, it certainly worked on the thoroughly embarrassed staff of The Sun.
Editor-in-chief Stuart Higgins appeared on television and explained that the newspaper had been duped by sophisticated con artists. He apologized to Princess Diana and the royal family.
According to Higgins, the tape had been offered to him the previous week during a secret meeting with two men acting as intermediaries, one of whom he described as a "smart American lawyer."
He also insisted that the newspaper had made every possible effort to verify the tape's authenticity, consulting independent witnesses who had confirmed the identities of the princess and her lover.
But more thorough examinations conducted after The Sun's blunder only made matters worse.
It emerged that none of the "experts" who had authenticated the footage had noticed that the woman in the video was wearing a watch on her right wrist. That was because Nicky Lilley, who was left-handed, habitually wore her watch that way, while Diana wore hers on her left wrist, like most people.
When the dust finally settled on the fiasco, one man was certainly celebrating the whole affair: the editor of the Daily Mirror.
A certain fellow you may have heard of.
His name was Piers Morgan.