Squidgygate: Encyclopedia II - Squidgygate - How the tape came to be published

Squidgygate - How the tape came to be published

The tape was allegedly published after it was accidentally recorded by a retired bank manager who was a radio ham as a hobby. In fact, subsequent events proved that this was not the whole story.

Squidgygate - First eavesdropper: Cyril Reenan

In January 1990, two reporters from the Sun newspaper met Cyril Reenan in the parking bay of Didcot railway station, six miles from his home in the town of Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Reenan played them excerpts from a tape without having previously told them what he had recorded ^[1]

Two days later the journalists were shown round Mr Reenan's home-made eavesdropping studio, which they described as follows: "Above the scanners was a 1960s-style tape recorder with a microphone dangling down above the scanning equipment so that the couple could tape 'interesting' conversations."

Reenan was quoted as saying he was "so nervous I just want you [the reporters] to take the tape away."

"I didn't know what to do with it once I'd got it. I was stuck with it, and I was frightened of it,' he was quoted as saying, claiming that if the paper had told him that "the tape was 'dangerous', I would have burned it or scrubbed it out." ^[2]

Cyril Reenan, a 70-year-old retired manager for the Trustee Savings Bank, regularly listened in on non-commercial radio frequencies for amusement with his wife, in much the same way that some people (illegally) listen to police frequencies using household radio sets.

Reenan was also a generous organiser of trips for disabled youngsters, and had previously been the recipient of a modest award from the Princess of Wales's Charities Trust ^[3].

Reenan claimed that he had been so worried by the evident security breach that he had first thought of attempting to gain an audience with Diana: "I could have used a code-word, perhaps the nickname Squidgy... I was trying to save her face in a way." However, having thought on it "for a day, at least", Reenan decided that he "would not get to see Diana." So he "rang the Sun instead."

Squidgygate - Publication

Published in The Sun on 23 August 1992, "Squidgygate" (initially called 'Dianagate') was the front-page revelation of the existence of a tape-recording of Princess Diana talking to a close friend, who later turned out to be James Gilbey, heir to the eponymous gin fortune.

A special phone line allowed thousands of callers to hear the contents of the 30-minute tape for themselves, at 36 pence per minute.

The tape begins in mid-conversation with the man asking: "And so, darling, what other lows today?" To which the woman replies: "I was very bad at lunch, and I nearly started blubbing. I just felt so sad and empty and thought 'bloody hell, after all I've done for this fucking family ^[4].' "It's just so desperate. Always being innuendo, the fact that I'm going to do something dramatic because I can't stand the confines of this marriage [...] He makes my life real torture, I've decided."

Gilbey, who initially denied the Sun's charges, was a 33-year-old Lotus car-dealer who had been a friend of Diana's since childhood. Their conversation, which took place on New Year's Eve 1989, was wide-ranging.

The conversation covered topics as diverse as the BBC soap opera EastEnders, and the strange looks that Diana received from the Queen Mother: "It's not hatred, it's sort of pity and interest mixed in one [...] every time I look up, she's looking at me, and then looks away and smiles".

(Interestingly, in view of a fascination with clairvoyance that was later to become well-known, Diana was also heard explaining how she had startled the Bishop of Norwich by claiming to be "aware that people I have loved and [who] have died [...] are now in the spirit world, looking after me.") ^[5]

Diana expressed worries about whether a recent meeting with Gilbey would be discovered. She also discussed a fear of becoming pregnant, and Gilbey referred to her as "Darling" 14 times, and as "Squidgy" (or "Squidge") 53 times.

Squidgygate - Second eavesdropper: Jane Norgrove

On 5 September 1992, the Sun announced that the same call had also been recorded by another Oxfordshire eavesdropper, 25-year-old Jane Norgrove.

Norgrove claimed she had recorded the call on New Year's Eve 1989, but "didn't even listen to it. I just put the tape in a drawer. I didn't play it until weeks later, and then I suddenly realised who was speaking on the tape".

In January 1991, after sitting on the tape for a year, Norgrove approached the Sun. The paper made a copy of her recording, and offered her £200 for her time: Norgrove refused the money, claiming that she "got scared and didn't want to know about it any more. ^[6]"

Norgrove claimed: "I wanted to speak out to now to clear up all this nonsense about a conspiracy [..] I'm not part of a Palace plot to smear the Princess of Wales."

(The Sun had initially published the opinions of "a senior courtier [who] claims the tape is part of a plot to blacken Diana's name" and the verdicts of other anonymous Palace staffers, who said that the tape was "a sophisticated attempt to "get even" by friends loyal to Prince Charles after Diana's co-operation with the book Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton ^[7].")

Such speculation had not been confined to tabloid newspapers: William Parsons, of anti-surveillance consultants Systems Elite, remarked that the technical and atmospheric requirements for such a recording to be possible (both halves of a cellular telephone call, with equal clarity, when the callers were over 100 miles apart, in different network 'cells'), were so improbable as to arouse suspicion: "My money would not be on somebody accidentally picking it up [...] There is more to this than meets the eye ^[8]."

Jane Norgrove was adamant: "It was just me, recording a telephone conversation in my bedroom. Nothing more and nothing less than that ^[9]."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "How the tape came to be published", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki