Skipper

I swear I'll never use another picture of Lady Di on my blog-which is more than editors of the Express papers can say about their dreadful publications. But the recent Stevens Report provided an instructive insight into the minds of conspiracy theorists. Stevens, using the throroughness of a career senior copper, concluded that all the other stories were rubbish, especially the one about MI6 being behind it. She was not pregnant and not intending to marry Dodi Fayed. The crash occurred as a result of Henri Paul, the driver, being drunk and driving far too fast. This in no way exonerated the jackal hordes of paparazzi who probably caused Paul to drive so recklessly in the first place and, once the crash had occurred, rejected the idea of helping the stricken princess in favour of taking pictures of her.

But all this was too simple for the theorists who prefer to hug close alternative ideas. As Simon Hoggart notes in his piece today [sorry, my PC refuses to make links at the moment] such people need a big and complex corpus of facts so that they can cherry pick those which suit their own agenda. Stevens might have exploded a few myths but many more remain. Was Dodi about to propose that night? Who was the mystery (non Camilla) woman Charles was allegedly planning to marry?

The fount of many of these theories, Mohammed al Fayed, was wholly unconvinced by the report which he dismissed in the same terms used to dismiss his own ideas('I feel sorry for the taxpayers and the money that has been wasted on such garbage'). On Today yesterday he insisted it was MI6 which had plotted the murder and that Stevens had been 'got at' by the security services. However hard James Naughtie tried to intrude reality into his interview with the owner of Harrods, it was resolutely thrust aside. But at least he has an excuse- the grief of losing a son, I imagine, is enough to drive you slightly demented and this, ultimately is the kindest thing one can say about the man. The Express newspapers have no such excuse.