Skipper

Max Hastings doesn't always write the sort of analyses with which I naturally agree but his comments on the Diana inquest are spot on. Ten busy years after her death it seems so many people still don't want to let go of her. The result has been an unseemly peep show in which we are invited into the most intimate details of her life: her contraception methods, her menstrual cycle and so forth. Maybe this is the natural consequence of her love affair with the media but it is no less palatable for that.

At the heart of the process seems to lie the curious psyche of Mohamed al Fayed, the multi-millionaire owner of Harrods and Fulham FC. Any father can understand his grief at losing his son and why he might have entertained some slightly bizarre explanations of how his death came about. Having lost something so precious it is not so hard to understand a father might reject the banality of the 'tragic accident' explanation. But to construct a conspiracy theory involving the Duke of Edinburgh and MI5 and to rubbish any contradictory information as part of that same conspiracy, seems to constitute symptoms of a truly unbalanced mind.

Like Hastings also, I find it hard to understand the role of Michael Mansfield QC, one of the most high profile and genuinely distinguished lawyers in the country. To be the instrument of Al Fayed's efforts to prove his weird fantasy is fact must be truly demeaning. Being a 'taxi for hire' as Rumpole of the Bailey used to describe barristers, is one thing, but doesn't the taxi driver usually reserve the right to refuse certain passengers?

With hindsight, when this sorry affair is over, I bet he'll wish 'pressure of work sadly forbids' had been his response to the Harrods' owner. My one sincere belief from all this distasteful episode is that the ghost of the doomed princess has finally been laid to rest but while the Daily Express still has papers to sell and al Fayed continues to exist in his alternative dimension, I suspect I might be wrong even on this.