THEY might have picked a better day to release the news, but you cannot blame the people behind a new Sky HISTORY series for capitalising on the unveiling of a statue of Princess Diana on what would have been her 60th birthday.
Their “news” is that one in three people in the UK believe Princess Diana’s death in a high-speed car crash in a Paris underpass on August 31, 1997, was not an accident.
The research was commissioned by Sky HISTORY – always be suspicious of block capitals – to launch its new series of programming, Summer Of Secrets, revealing the top conspiracy theories the general public believe in.
In a poll of 2000 people across the UK conducted last month, the theory that Diana’s death was not accidental came top of the findings, with a whopping 33% of those surveyed believing that the deaths of the princess, her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed, and chauffeur Henri Paul were caused deliberately.
Despite the inquiries and the inquest, and despite all the evidence pointing overwhelmingly at the chauffeur being inebriated, it seems a third of people just cannot believe that the People’s Princess was taken from them in something as banal as a car accident.
READ MORE: UFO special: The seven strangest unexplained sightings in Scotland's skies
Practically from the day she died at the age of just 36, all sorts of weird and outlandish claims have been made about a variety of people having killed her. Dodi’s father Mohamed Al-Fayed, for example, said it was all a conspiracy orchestrated by the royal family and the secret services.
Conspiracy theories are supposed to be the preserve of strange Americans, but it looks as though the Brits have succumbed to the obsessional pursuit of the “truth”.
In the same poll, 7% of those surveyed said Paul McCartney secretly died in 1966, with The Beatles hiring a lookalike to take his place, who still lives today.
Here are some other findings, with how many people believe in them...
People other than Lee Harvey Oswald were involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (below) – 29%.
Area 51 is used to secretly investigate aliens and UFOs – 22%.
The 9/11 attack involved more people than just the Al-Qaeda terrorists – 21%.
The Roswell incident was covered up, and the material recovered there did not belong to a weather balloon as officially claimed – 20%.
People other than James Earl Ray, like the Ku Klux Klan or the FBI, were secretly behind the assassination of Martin Luther King – 17%.
World governments use chemtrails to secretly poison their people – 12%.
Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, USA, is the site or paranormal activity where unexplained and strange things happen – 11%.
The moon landings were faked – 11%.
Famous monuments like Stonehenge, the Pyramids or Mount Rushmore were actually created by aliens – 10%.
That last one is the craziest one of all, considering that film exists of Gutzon and Lincoln Borglum directing the mammoth sculptural operation that saw presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson immortalised in stone in 1941.
The promotional people said: “SUMMER OF SECRETS [those worrying block capitals again] investigates the biggest riddles from history this July on Sky HISTORY. Brand new and exclusive programmes explore history’s most enigmatic tales, from historic conspiracies involving confidential information and high ranking officials to ancient mysteries and the outright bizarre.
“The truth unfolds on Sky HISTORY from July 12.”
Even now a conspiracy theory is being prepared to explain how England were robbed of Euro 2020.
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