Pizzas galore!

"Did you object or try and explain that to anyone?" I asked. "No, it would be awful to have been turned down twice," she said.

Underlying everything was her sense of her personal contact, through the media, with the British people and the family's fear of that. "My husband's father once sent me a long formal letter setting out the duties of the Princess of Wales. There was 'much more to it than being popular', he said. I sent him back a long letter in reply. He sent me a shorter one - and so on until I finally signed off with 'it's been so nice getting to know you like this'. One day those letters will all be found in the archives. So will the memos by which my husband and I communicate too. Can you believe it?"

She made it clear that she alone, she felt, could manage her image, her job and her family. She felt that her husband's friends were manipulating the press against her - as they had done on this very day - and that her only recourse was to fight like with like. And on this day too, she had a plan.

To my horror she began to set out a complicated story about how she had helped a tramp who had fallen into the Regent's Park canal and was going to see him in hospital that afternoon. This "Diana rescues tramp" story was new to me. But I had missed enough "royal exclusives" in my life to be far from sure that I had not just somehow missed this one too.

A Perrier with the Princess

Peter Stothard, former Editor of The Times, recalls a discussion with Diana about memos, mistresses and the media

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That prospect obviously worried her as well. I did not seem interested enough. Some bits of her story did not fit together as well as a true story should. Yet it seemed churlish to cross-examine a Princess who, in any case, had such a clear and crowded agenda of her own.

It was just at this moment that we were saved by the waitress and her warning that the newspaper paparazzi - with their special guides to pricing dresses, shoes and hats - were gathered outside the main restaurant door for her exit.

The Times car was at the side. We both slipped out of the door - and into the back seat. "University College Hospital," I said and we drove back across Park Lane. I began to explain to our passenger that this ruse was all rather pointless since no paparazzi were anywhere to be seen. Then she pointed to the wooded area in the central reservation of the road. First one lens caught the light. Then another behind a low branch, another on a thick trunk and others she said that she saw up in the trees. There was one man that she recognised, another that she began to wave to before the moment had passed and the car was on its way to the tramp.

There was then a sharp banging on the top of the car. I started with alarm. The Princess was much calmer. Sitting six feet above the road, holding no camera that either of us could see, a unicyclist was correcting his balance with a rest upon our roof.

Later that day a royal messenger delivered a thick cream letter, thanking me for the "rescue" in an airy open hand. "Today of all days it meant a great deal to me not to be photographed." The next day the newspapers carried full acounts of how the Princess had saved the tramp. The Times carried the story too, though without any briefing from me. It seemed perhaps the least interesting part of what the Princess had said.

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