Right royal farce straight from the pages of Dumas

Published on Sunday 7 October 2007 01:54

HOW long, may one humbly ask, are we to be haunted by the spectre of the pathetic Princess Diana? Ten years on from her death, why is she still costing us millions of pounds?

It would be a relief if the obscene farce now being played out at the High Court in London could be the last act in her posthumous soap opera. Unfortunately, it will not because the sad and silly Di-olaters, the conspiracy theorists and those who make money out of the monarchy industry will make sure it drags on ad nauseam.

No one can be in any doubt that this latest inquest, the fourth investigation by a coroner into the events of August 31, 1997, is being held to further a rich man's vendetta and in a deluded bid to salvage the soiled reputation of the Royal Family. It would not be happening but for Mohamed Al Fayed's obsession and the knee-jerk reaction that the Queen and Co must be protected against scurrilous allegations, no matter how far fetched.

Everything that can possibly be known about the deaths of Diana, Dodi and (let us not forget) their driver Henri Paul is already known. The rest is fantasy, gossip and innuendo against the toxic background of a family that isn't up to the job it has inherited. If any ordinary citizen had implicated any other family in bizarre allegations of conspiracy to commit triple murder, supported only by hearsay and a grieving father's gut feeling, it would have been thrown out of court for lack of prima facie evidence.

Fayed will not be satisfied until the Duke of Edinburgh and the British security services are sitting in the dock, charged with plotting and carrying out the triple killing. Does that seem likely? He also wants to put the Queen in the witness box, claiming there were times when she was the only person Diana could talk to in confidence and "she has an unrivalled knowledge of the princess' state of mind". That will never happen.

As the judge laid it out, Fayed believes the Royal Family could not accept that an Egyptian Muslim could be stepfather to the future king; that the Royal Family and their senior policy advisers took a decision to kill both Diana and Dodi; and he places Prince Philip "at the heart of the conspiracy". This is a plot straight from the pages of Alexander Dumas or Anthony Hope's tales of murky doings in Ruritania. For one thing, Prince Philip could never be cast as mastermind of anything - criminal or otherwise.

Fayed also says MI5, MI6, the CIA and the French authorities were involved, blood samples were surreptitiously swapped, post-mortem examination results were fabricated and Diana's body was illegally embalmed, on the orders of the British ambassador, to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi's child. Conspiracy theories do not come more complicated, nor more bizarre, than that.

The marriage of the potential Queen Mother to a Muslim playboy might have been regarded by some as an embarrassment, but the monarchy has survived much worse scandals in modern times without (as far as we know) resorting to murder.

And if our security services try to kill anyone by hoping their driver will get drunk and crash their car, I want my money back. There could hardly be a more inefficient method of assassination, since there could be no guarantee that anyone would die; in my dafter newspaper days, I was involved in dozens of paparazzi-style chases and no one suffered a scratch.

It does not take a 10m inquest to recall that the betrayed, but self-dramatising, Princess had every reason to be paranoid. Diana's only importance was that she provided the British monarchy with 'an heir and a spare' and their callous treatment of her exposed the Royal Family as dysfunctional, deceitful and thoroughly unworthy of the sycophancy that surrounds them. The only threat she posed was that while she lived, she was the reminder of something that had been obvious for over a century: that the Windsors make the word 'majesty' meaningless.

The long aftermath of Diana's death has already made the Royal Family look devious and downright silly. Remember how the case against Diana's butler Paul Burrell was mysteriously dropped after the Queen suddenly recovered her memory and recalled Burrell had told her he was keeping Diana's belongings safe? The suspicion was that the trial would have revealed evidence of Royal chicanery or Charles' adultery or Diana's post-marital affairs or a combination of the lot.

Now, there will be greater indignities heaped on them as every crackpot theory is explored and their family secrets exposed. And that is the only good that may come out of this, since it should make us take a long, hard look at the crumbling monarchy and see it for the pointless anachronism that it is.

The derision that will result from his public pillorying should at least ensure the inadequate and far-from-bonny Prince Charles never becomes king; it might also raise questions about whether the entire edifice of pomp, privilege and parasitism should end with the present monarch before we have another King William on the throne. It would be ironic - but typical of destructive Diana - if, from beyond the grave, she damaged her son's chances of achieving the destiny she prepared for him.

It may be too much for republicans to hope that Britain will drag itself into the 21st century. But at least we can enjoy six months of Royal red faces.