On 24 August 1992, The Sun published the transcript of a private telephone conversation. On one end of the line was Princess Diana. On the other was James Gilbey, an old friend from a wealthy family.
The call had taken place on New Year’s Eve 1989. Diana was at Sandringham with the royal family. Gilbey was reportedly speaking from his car, parked in the countryside.
The conversation was warm and intimate. Gilbey called Diana darling again and again, and used an affectionate nickname for her: Squidgy. The press quickly named the scandal Squidgygate.
But the tape revealed more than affection. Diana spoke openly and bitterly about her life inside the royal family. She described feeling watched and unappreciated, and complained about how she was treated after everything she had done for the family.
The recording had been made by a radio enthusiast, a retired bank manager who said he picked up the call on his scanner at home. He passed the tape to The Sun in 1990. The newspaper held on to it for around two years before publishing.
When it finally did, it went further than any paper had gone before. Alongside the transcript, The Sun set up a premium-rate phone line so readers could call and hear the tape for themselves. Thousands did.
The timing was devastating for Diana. Only weeks earlier, Andrew Morton’s book had exposed the unhappiness in her marriage. Now the public could hear her voice talking privately to another man.
And there was a lingering mystery. Some experts later questioned how an ordinary home scanner could have captured such a clear recording, and suggested the call may have been recorded and rebroadcast. No official explanation was ever confirmed.
In December 1992, Charles and Diana announced their separation. A month later, a similar tape surfaced, this time of a private call between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Squidgygate became one of the defining scandals of the royal family’s most difficult year, and a reminder of how little privacy Diana really had.