Diana's butler "did not tell the truth"

[Snoopy]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2783963120080401

Surely any or all of us could have told him that before they spent £6m to find out.

[Barman]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2783963120080401

Surely any or all of us could have told him that before they spent £6m to find out.

I could... 

[Nick]

The man is a slimeball. Strangely almost everyone connnected with this case also appears to be a slimeball.

You can tell a princess by the company she keeps!

PS A suitably irate reaction to my latest PM would constitute moral support, snoops!

[Grumpmeister]

You can tell a princess by the company she keeps!

Are you saying that the rest of the royals are whiter than white Nick? 

[Snoopy]

I think he is saying, and I agree with him, that Diana had an unfortunate habit of acquiring the most unsuitable people to go to bed with, to confide in and generally to hang out with.
OK she was the acceptable sacrificial virgin that had to be found to provide an heir for Charles but given all that would have been hers with a more careful choice of confidants and a little dignity and she would still be enjoying it whilst looking forward to being Queen. Bedding half of the Household Cavalry and sundry others was not a wise choice and bleating her troubles, real and imagined to any passing Arab, poofter in waiting and journalist was even sillier.

[Grumpmeister]

I suspect that was as much a case of rebelling against the establishment once she realised what was going on as anything else.

I'll admit that I'm a republican and have little time for most of the royal family having said that as I live in cornwall thats hardly surprising. Being landed with the jug eared buffoon and the weremunter doesnt do much for my sunny disposition.

[Nick]

When I was young and hot headed I thought that the Royal Family should be pensioned off and left to die out. NOw I am older,wiser and more mature I think they should be shot

[Grumpmeister]

Gotta love some of the final coverage of the thing by the BBC. This is about the 'supporters' (judging from this guy I'd say more likely care in the community):

You've packed in your job and got up at 5am for the last six months to attend the Diana inquest. Now that it's all over, what do you do?

Having cost several million pounds and taken more than half a year, it's safe to say the inquest into the 1997 crash that killed Diana, Dodi Al Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul has been something of a marathon.

 
Diana died in 1997

But while those on the courtroom floor will have been paid to attend - quite handsomely in the case of the barristers - a small group of devotees in the public gallery of the Royal Courts of Justice in London haven't received a penny.

Their dedication has cost them time and money over the last six months, even the comfort of their own home in one case. The most obsessive even gave up his job so he could follow the proceedings each day.

But what led them to put their lives on hold for the hearing? And now the inquest, which has concluded the deaths were the result of unlawful killing, has finished, what are their next steps? Here, three devotees of the hearing have their say.


JOHN LOUGHREY
"I'm going down in history for this," says John Loughrey. "It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a portrait of me hanging in Kensington Palace in 100 years time."

The 53-year-old chef is serious; he always is when it comes to the Diana inquest. Covered in fake tan with her name written in shaky blue letters across his forehead and Dodi on his cheeks, he's been a constant - and very conspicuous - presence in the public gallery.

He gave up his job to attend every day and is the only member of the public who has. He got up at 5am every morning and even slept outside the Royal Courts of Justice for three days to secure a seat on the first day.

"Everyone knows me here, they all talk to me and say hello," he says. "I've been here so long I notice when people have had a hair cut. I've become part of the fixtures and fittings."

He even got a mention in the coroner's summing up to the jury. "No one except you and I and, I think, the gentleman in the public gallery with Diana and Dodi painted on his forehead has sat through every word of evidence," said Lord Justice Scott Baker.

That pleased the Diana fan and ardent royalist, who decided to attend the inquest after receiving "a sign" outside Kensington Palace on the anniversary of Diana's death last year. He felt four fingers rest on his left shoulder but no one was near him.

He's funded the whole thing by renting out his flat in south London and moving in with his sister in Enfield, north London.

He backs the "no murder" verdict and is dismissive of those who think it was some sort of conspiracy, saying there's "lots of paranoia" among Diana fans.

For him it's been about tying up loose ends and putting Diana's memory to rest. Despite the fact he has made the inquest his life for six months, he is very nonchalant about it ending.

"It's fine, I move on very quickly from things," he says. "I have plans, firstly I'm going to go on holiday with my sister. Then I'll think about getting another job."

And the Diana and Dodi written on his face?

"I just I woke up one day and decided to do it, I don't know when I'll wake up and decide to stop doing it," he says.