When Britain's The Sun Fell for a Fake Princess Diana Video Scoop

Every beginning business person will tell you that if you are offered a deal that looks too good to be true, it is very likely simply because it is not true. Along similar lines, experienced journalists around the world also know that quite often if a story sounds too fantastic, it is simply because it is completely fabricated. The people behind the British newspaper The Sun learned both of these lessons, both business and media-related, the hard way back in the mid-1990s.

The 80-Second Scoop That Shook Britain

Back in those days, The Sun boasted no less than 4 million loyal readers, largely thanks to its editors' penchant for producing a steady supply of sensational stories that caused trouble for Britain's beautiful, famous, and wealthy. So when the newspaper's headlines screamed in early October 1996 that a hot video starring Princess Diana and her mythological lover had reached the editorial board, everyone simply assumed that the scoop-hunters had finally caught the ultimate story.

The controversial 80-second video supposedly showed Princess Diana stripping and cuddling with James Hewitt, her former riding instructor, a man whose name had previously been linked with her in romantic contexts. When The Sun published its scoop, Diana was already the ex-wife of Prince Charles, but it was claimed that the video itself was filmed five years earlier while the two were still married, and that the location of the infidelity was Prince Charles's country estate. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson managed to issue a statement on behalf of Princess Diana saying she did not recognize herself or Hewitt in the video, but the denial felt too generic and laconic.

The 12-Hour Illusion and Royal Lookalikes

As it turned out, the sensational publication about Diana and Hewitt lasted exactly 12 hours before the Daily Mirror—The Sun's rival newspaper—announced it was going to publish the real truth the next morning. Almost immediately, it became clear that the figures appearing in the video were less Princess Diana and James Hewitt, and more actors and models hired from a well-known London agency specializing in royal lookalikes.

In fact, one of the kingdom's television stations even broadcast the original tape, this time in color and close-up, to expose the manipulations made to convince The Sun's staff that it was authentic. It turned out the published 80-second video was simply a clip from an experimental pilot episode of a satirical series about the royal family filmed a few months earlier. The producers hired an anonymous actor named Gareth to play Hewitt, alongside two different models who had made a living for years based on their external resemblance to Princess Diana.

Apologies and the Watch Detail

When the dust of the blunder finally settled, the editor-in-chief of The Sun, Stuart Higgins, appeared on television to explain that the newspaper had been duped by sophisticated fraudsters, offering an apology to Princess Diana and the royal family. He claimed the tape had been offered to him the previous week in a secret meeting with two men acting as intermediaries, one of whom was a slick American lawyer.

Yet more meticulous checks conducted after The Sun's major slip-up only deepened the hole. It turned out that none of the "experts" who verified the video's authenticity noticed that the woman in it was wearing a watch on her right wrist. This happened because Nicky Lilly, a right-handed person, naturally did so, whereas Diana wore her watch on her left wrist like most of the world. When the smoke cleared, there was one man who thoroughly celebrated the entire event—the editor of the Daily Mirror, a fellow named Piers Morgan.