Diana, Princess of Wales, was given a Bulgari ring by Dodi Fayed in the weeks before she died but never saw it as an engagement present, the inquests into the pair's death heard today.

Paul Burrell, the Princess’s former butler, insisted that she had no plans to marry Mr Fayed, and chose to wear the gold band on her right hand as a symbol of her friendship with the multi-millionaire. He said he did not believe that they had ever planned to get engaged.

He claimed he spoke to the Princess on a number of occasions while she was on holiday in the Mediterranean, shortly before the couple were killed in Paris.

Mr Burrell, 49, said that the Princess was "overwhelmed" by Mr Fayed’s generosity during their luxury yachting trip. He said she was given a Bulgari necklace, ear rings, watch and bracelet by the 42-year-old son of Mohamed Al Fayed, the Harrods store owner.

He said that in one telephone conversation he told her: "'You know what is coming next. The next gift you are going to receive will be a ring and it could be misconstrued as an engagement ring'.

"She said, ‘If he gave me a ring, what should I do with it?’, and I said, ‘Put it on the fourth finger of your right hand and immediately he will see that it is a friendship ring, not an engagement ring’, and that’s when she said ‘I need marriage like a rash’."

The former butler, who claims to have been a close confidante of the Princess, said that he did not believe the Princess and Mr Fayed planned to marry because had such a "momentous" event been planned he would have told her to reorganise her diary and would have consulted her children, Princes William and Harry.

"It was not an engagement ring, it was a friendship band," he told the High Court in London. "This was only a 30-day relationship. The Princess had just finished a long-term relationship with someone she had cared deeply about. I know that because I was there and saw it.

"And on the rebound from that relationship, (she) had met someone who was very kind, generous and spoiling. The Princess enjoyed it."

He added that had she planned to marry she would have told a close friend - "someone she trusted as much as me".

The jury was shown a photograph of the Princess during her holiday, where the Bulgari ring could clearly be seen on the fourth finger of her right hand.

He added that during one telephone conversation the Princess had suggested she was eager to return from the yacht trip in St Tropez because she was missing her sons.

He said: "She did say it was scorching hot all day on the deck and freezing cold downstairs in the air conditioning. She was, in her words, ‘crawling the walls and wanting to come home’."

Mr Burrell said that the Harrods’ horse-drawn carriage would regularly arrive at Kensington Palace delivering gifts or purchases for the Princess.

Mohamed Al Fayed once sent the young Princes the latest plasma television and two computer game consoles, adding that Diana had given one of the machines to Mr Burrell’s children as her children did not need two.

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