Blair aide reveals feuds behind Diana’s funeral

ANJI HUNTER, Tony Blair’s head of government relations and his former ‘gatekeeper’ at no 10, has spoken publicly for the first time about the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. Laying bare the tensions that arose between the different factions in the run-up to Diana’s funeral, she remembers her first conversation with the PM following the news of the Princess’s fatal car crash in Paris in 1997.

‘I was on the phone to Tony and he got it straight away. The phrase was, “My God, these are enormous doings.” He told me: “We’ve got to be absolutely wise and sensible and focused”.’ In next Tuesday’s Channel 5 documentary, Diana: 7 Days That Shook The Windsors, Hunter recalls her role on the Palace committee set up to organise the funeral. It wasn’t long before problems arose.

‘The most tension in the room always came from Charles Spencer’s people,’ says Anji (below).

The programme will claim Earl Spencer wanted to walk alone behind Diana’s coffin, but royal advisers were not happy.

Prince Charles was adamant that he also wanted to walk behind it. But the rest of the funeral team felt William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should be there, too.

However, William was refusing to join the procession, saying he wanted to grieve privately.

Hoping to persuade William to change his mind, five days before the funeral on September 6, the team set up a telephone conference call with Balmoral via a big loudspeaker box on their conference table.

‘I can remember — it sends a tingle up my back, actually,’ says Hunter. ‘We were all talking about how William and Harry should be involved and suddenly from this box came Prince Philip’s voice. We hadn’t heard from him before, but he was really anguished.

‘ “It’s about the boys,” he cried, “They’ve lost their mother.” I thought, “My God, there’s a bit of suffering going on up there.” ’

When Hunter’s husband Adam Boulton wrote about the same episode in his 2008 memoir, he recalled that Prince Philip actually used a profanity, so exasperated was he by Downing Street’s attempt to dictate the roles William and Harry should play at the funeral .

Meanwhile, Diana’s chauffeur Colin Tebbutt also talks on camera for the first time about what really happened in the hospital room when he and the Princess’s butler, Paul Burrell, arrived in Paris to collect her body .

‘I was worried about the room, which was very, very hot. We looked up at the window above the Princess’s bed and could see people on rooftops, trying to take photos.

‘It didn’t seem as if they knew which room to look for at that stage, and I asked for blankets to hang up at the window, so nobody could see in.’ This made the room even hotter, so Tebbutt placed fans all around the Princess’s body to keep her cool.

‘I noticed her hair was moving — which was the breeze from the fans of course — but for just a fraction of a second I thought, “Is she alive?” which was a silly thing to think. ‘Having been on top of everything until then, I had to turn away and take 30 seconds to myself, as a personal emotional moment.’