Princess Diana's Chauffeur Takes Legal Action After 'The Crown'

Princess Diana's chauffeur has won an out-of-court settlement from the BBC after a journalist wrongly told the royal he was leaking to the media.

Steve Davies was unexpectedly let go by the Princess of Wales in 1995 and only recently discovered the reason while watching the Netflix series The Crown.

BBC journalist Martin Bashir was trying to get an interview with Diana, and in an apparent effort to gain her trust, he falsely suggested that various staffers had betrayed her.

Among them was Davies, who Bashir said "feeds [the now-defunct] Today newspaper," adding, "Change your chauffeur."

Davies is still a driver and discovered to his "great distress" that the false narrative had been resurrected for a modern audience, his lawyers said.

After suing for slander, he has now won a settlement and a full apology from the BBC, which acknowledged that the allegation was "wholly false."

"The suggestion that [Davies] violated the Princess's trust in this way created a serious blot on his character," Davies' attorney, Persephone Bridgman Baker of British firm Carter-Ruck, told the High Court.

She continued: "[Davies] was devastated by the termination of his employment with the princess. He had maintained a close professional relationship with the princess throughout the many years he had worked for her, and he was given no reason for the termination.

"[Davies] was tormented by speculation about what possible reason there could be for the termination of his employment and was acutely embarrassed about his dismissal," Baker said. "It is a matter of profound regret to him that, as he now knows, the princess believed that he had betrayed her, and he was unable to correct the position before her tragic death."

A BBC statement read in court and separately released to the media said: "The BBC accepts that the allegation made about [Davies] was and is wholly false and should never have been made, and that it constitutes an attack on the Claimant's reputation both personally and professionally."

The statement went on: "The BBC accepts that the allegation was likely to have caused HRH the Princess of Wales to doubt the Claimant's loyalty and professionalism and may well have contributed to the Claimant's redundancy six months later. The BBC is sorry for the distress and harm suffered by the Claimant."

Davies said in a statement: "I am relieved that I have been able to clear my name, and my professional reputation as a chauffeur, through this legal process. I was shocked to hear that these false allegations had been made about me almost thirty years ago and were very likely to be the cause of my sudden termination."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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