Diana inquest won’t quell speculation forever
That nine-minute walk between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Courts of Justice neatly encapsulates her adult existence in a snapshot.
Another irony is Diana died too soon to experience the vacuous age of celebrity for celebrity’s sake we now endure in the Heat/Big Brother era.
For Diana was not just somebody’s (wronged) wife, she was a pretty face too. And the world could not get enough pictures of it.
Her global reach was so pervasive we all remember where we were the night she died. Well not quite all, as the mystery driver of the white Fiat Uno that clipped her Mercedes in the Paris underpass just before the crash has totally forgotten all about it and failed to get in touch with the police.
Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker laid out every lurid conspiracy in his opening remarks, stopping just short of linking Diana to the faking of the moon landings, but including Mohamed al-Fayed’s claim Prince Phillip engineered the deaths via the secret service.
Did Don Philip, the Greek Godfather, order the “whackings”? Was the infamous Fiat Uno being driven by a Queen Mother high on gin? This is what the British taxpayer is spending £10m (€14m) to find out.
The foul play lobby was heartened by the revelation MI6 agents were in Paris at the time. However, official insistence they were not there for Diana but for “other reasons” has not been elaborated upon, thus ensuring more speculation, but we can probably rule out a romantic mini-break or a Spooks team bonding weekend at EuroDisney.
Despite the soap opera subject matter, crowds to the public gallery have been lower than expected, but that has not deterred John Laughrey from ensuring his place in the queue by sleeping rough at the Royal Courts each night.
He is almost as proud of his family’s Mayo roots as he is devoted to the princess’s memory. The latter is more than hinted at by the huge blue letters across his forehead and cheeks spelling out “Diana At Last”, a reference to the fact it’s taken 10 years to get to this hearing.
It must also be a useful visual reminder to the coroner why they are all there as John stares intently at him in the cramped little room housing 23 lawyers, 11 jurors, 10 court officials and various press and public onlookers.
And what does John think the outcome of this multi-million pound spectacle will be?
“Oh, they will say its accidental death. But this will go on forever. It’s Jack the Ripper meets JFK. I’m selling my tickets to the public gallery on e-Bay for charity — it’s what Diana would have wanted,” he reveals, rolling-up his sleeping bag.
Another of the “Di-hards”, as they are known, declines to give her name, but has an intriguing take on who is responsible for killing Diana.
“Well, you are in a way, dear,” she accuses me, smiling.
After I explain that on the night of the murder/ accident/assassination, I was in fact in west London, 230 miles from the crash site and have several witnesses to prove it, she widens the charge to the world media as a whole, not me specifically.
The uneasy tightrope walk this enquiry trips between the semi-ridiculous and the sombre is exemplified by a strangely flippant comment by one of the lawyers as the jury — in a bizarre inversion of normality — are shown shots of the rather unhappy looking paparazzi photographers who pursued Diana and Dodi Fayed from the Ritz into the underpass.
Pointing out one in particular, counsel tells the jury: “He is wearing a rather striking, if not fetching, yellow jacket.”
The court is then shown the pictures the paparazzi continued to take at the crash scene before they even attempted to help those mortally wounded and trapped in the wreckage. Unlike the rest of the evidence, the photographs they kept taking of the dead and dying will not be made public on the inquest’s website as they are considered too grim.
Less than 20 minutes walk in the other direction from the courts of justice is Westminster Abbey where Diana’s extraordinary funeral was played out.
As it happens, I was one of about a dozen or so print journalists allowed into the Abbey for the service. In the haste of the arrangements, we were given a commanding vantage point almost directly opposite the royal family.
The positioning was all the more surprising as the TV coverage was banned from showing the royals’ faces.
However, it soon also began to feel rather too intrusive as first the then 13-year-old Prince Harry, and latterly his elder brother began to weep uncontrollably.
Person, mother, tragedy, conspiracy, global marketing brand.
It seems that Diana will never really leave us. Maybe John already knows more than the inquest will after all.
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