“A Very Damaged Upbringing”: Camilla’s Friend Piers Morgan Turns Diana’s Trauma Into Entertainment

Princess Diana has been dead for nearly three decades, yet commentators still treat her pain as material for royal entertainment. The latest example comes from Piers Morgan. During The Royals Uncensored, an offshoot of Piers Morgan’s Uncensored media business, Morgan described Diana as coming from a “very damaged upbringing.”

The programme promoted Morgan’s remarks as a “unique insight” into Diana’s life. He was joined by Katie Nicholl, who gave evidence during Prince Harry and six other claimants’ unsuccessful case against Associated Newspapers, and former royal butler Grant Harrold, who apologised after sharing an AI-generated image of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Yet the clip reveals far more about the royal commentariat’s exploitation of the Spencer family than it does about Diana.

Morgan may recount his own interactions with Frances. That does not make him the final authority on her life, Diana’s childhood or Charles Spencer’s reasons for writing about his sister.

UPDATE: This first live audience episode of Royals Uncensored, taped at @LympneCastle in Kent, has already had 300k+ views in just 21hrs, and is already our most-watched show. Thanks for watching! https://t.co/84GHxDEj6B

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 11, 2026

Frances Shand Kydd Was More Than Morgan’s Anecdote

Diana did experience a deeply unsettled childhood. Her parents separated when she was young and fought a bitter custody battle. After their father secured custody, Diana and Charles Spencer lived primarily with him and spent much of their childhood apart from their mother.

Frances also experienced problems with alcohol later in life. Charles Spencer has addressed that history himself. In a 2024 Guardian interview, he said guilt appeared to contribute to his mother’s alcoholism during her final years.

However, Spencer offered something Morgan’s anecdote lacked: humanity and context. He recalled that Frances married at 18, became a mother at 19 and struggled to navigate the demands placed upon her. He also remembered her charitable work helping children travel to Lourdes and said he did not feel anger toward her.

Acknowledging Frances’s alcoholism does not require reducing her to “Diana’s drunken mother.” Morgan’s description of repeated intoxicated calls remains his account. The promotional clip offered no recordings, correspondence or independent evidence supporting the specific conversations he described.

The panel could have explored the family’s trauma with care. Instead, it presented a deceased woman’s alleged drunken telephone calls as colourful television material.

Access Did Not Make Morgan Diana’s Authority

Morgan did know Diana. His diaries describe a 1996 lunch at Kensington Palace with Diana and 13-year-old Prince William, during which she reportedly allowed him to ask almost anything.

But a lunch is access, not ownership. It did not make Morgan the custodian of Diana’s memory or give him authority over which members of her family may tell their story.

Nor is Morgan a neutral observer. He has openly advertised his closeness to Camilla, writing that he has known her family for years and that they share a private running joke. He has also admitted receiving messages of gratitude on behalf of members of the Royal Family, although he denied that Camilla personally sent one. Those admissions expose the relationship between royal figures and the journalists who defend them.

That connection is critical here. Camilla was the other woman in Diana’s marriage, and Diana described Charles’s renewed relationship with her as “pretty devastating.”

Yet a journalist friendly with Camilla is now exposing alleged private calls from Diana’s mother and judging the Spencer family. There is no evidence that Camilla directed this segment, but the conflict is impossible to ignore. Morgan cannot boast about his royal access and then expect readers to treat his attacks on Diana and the Spencers as independent commentary.

Morgan, Clarkson and the Camilla Connection

The pattern recalls Jeremy Clarkson, another friend of Camilla. In 2022, Clarkson attended a Christmas lunch with Camilla and Morgan just two days before The Sun published his column fantasising about Meghan Sussex being paraded naked while crowds threw excrement at her. There is no evidence that Camilla directed either attack, but the repeated sight of journalists with personal access to her targeting Diana and Meghan is impossible to ignore.

The panel only made the spectacle uglier. Instead of challenging Morgan, its members laughed and nodded along. Nobody asked whether Frances expected those alleged calls to become public or why a dead woman’s alcoholism had become entertainment.

The Royals Uncensored was not an insight. It was the royal commentariat feeding on the Spencer family’s trauma once again.

Charles Spencer Has Every Right to Write About His Sister

Charles Spencer shared Diana’s broken childhood. He experienced the same parental separation, the same loss of their mother and his own later trauma at boarding school. His account is not beyond examination, but it is unquestionably part of the historical record.

His forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, will be published on September 22. Spencer said he wrote it because he was tired of seeing other people’s opinions and untruths become accepted as fact. He intends to present Diana as he knew her and help younger readers understand the person behind the mythology. The Guardian reports that the book covers Diana’s life and the week surrounding her death.

Every day, the public is inundated with royal commentators’ opinions, theories and speculation. It is hardly surprising that some now appear uneasy about Charles Spencer’s book. Morgan and much of the royal commentariat reacted with similar hostility when Prince Harry published Spare.

These commentators are comfortable speaking for the Royal Family and interpreting other people’s lives. What unsettles them is the subject taking control of the story. Harry told his own story. Now Charles Spencer is telling his sister’s.

They can challenge Spencer’s account after reading it. What they cannot do is pretend a tabloid editor’s access outweighs the memories of the brother who shared Diana’s childhood. Piers Morgan interviewed her. Charles Spencer grew up beside her and that difference is the only one that matters.