Martin Bashir, the journalist who became a household name after he persuaded Princess Diana to open up about her marriage in a BBC Panorama interview, is returning to the corporation as a reporter.
Bashir, who also caused a worldwide sensation when he secured eight months of access to Michael Jackson for a controversial documentary, is to be the BBC’s new religious affairs correspondent.
The veteran journalist has spent more than a decade in the US, where he worked for ABC and MSNBC and continued to ignite controversy.
He was suspended from his role as a reporter for ABC’s Nightline in 2008 after referring to some of the participants at an Asian American journalists’ convention in Chicago as “Asian babes”.
He later apologised for what he said was a “tasteless remark”.
Two years later he joined MSNBC but resigned in 2013 after he referred to vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a “world-class idiot” and “America’s resident dunce”.
In response to her remarks comparing the US federal debt to slavery, Bashir also suggested Palin be forced to endure the treatment of slaves, including having someone defecate in her mouth.
Bashir said he was “delighted” to be returning to the BBC and described the spectrum of religious affairs as “challenging and compelling”.
His interview with Princess Diana, two years after her official separation from Prince Charles, made him one of the world’s most famous journalists after he quizzed her about intimate details of her marriage including her husband’s infidelity.
“Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” she said, in an oblique reference to Camilla Parker Bowles.
It paved the way for a lucrative career at ITV, where he again hit the headlines for interviews with the suspects in the murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Jonathan Munro, head of newsgathering at the BBC, said with his track record as an enterprising journalist and “as a student of theology”, Bashir would “bring immense knowledge of the brief to his new role, and an enthusiasm to cover the broadest range of faith-based stories”.
