Why Diana’s rock remains firmly rooted in the past

WHEN I interviewed Paul Burrell – former butler to Princess Diana and professional ‘rock’ – back in 2006, I was struck by just how much he appeared to live in the past.

He churned out long, tortured anecdotes about his time with the princess, including a pained story about how he sat with her body the night before the funeral.

He was prone, when talking about working at Kensington Palace, to saying things such as: ‘I close my eyes and see the lilies on the piano. I can hear Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. I think of the laughter, running round the corners with the children, and the fun we had.’ Even back then it was hard to stomach. Yet it was part of his schtick, the only thing which made him interesting, and therefore something to be whipped out and harped on about at every available opportunity. Over the years Burrell, pictured with Diana, has tried various money-making wheezes, from his ill-fated appearance on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! to his own range of wines. He churned out a succession of books that, in the words of Princes William and Harry, were a ‘betrayal’ of their mother.

In recent years he has opened a florist’s, declaring that ‘the princess set me up in this business, really’. One wonders what William and Harry would make of that. Now though, he’s closing it down and taking his husband, Graham Cooper, on a globe-trotting trip.

‘I want to take him to places I’ve been with the princess and say, “I remember walking on this spot with the Queen on the Great Wall of China”,’ he said this week.

Oh, Paul. Isn’t it about time you let go of that much-exploited past?