Di’s voice of despair

13 dates to royal destiny

LADY Diana Spencer met her future husband Prince Charles just 13 times before her wedding, which she describes as the “worst day of my life,’’ according to new videotapes being released as the 20th anniversary of her death approaches.

The comments made by the princess to her voice coach show Diana poured out her concerns about her life and her failing marriage as she practised for her upcoming bombshell Panorama interview in 1995.

The tapes, never before played in Britain, are being released in a new Channel 4 documentary, one of several made to mark the death of the 36-year-old princess in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997. News of the planned broadcast comes just hours after Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, took part in an emotional tribute to their mother in the form of a 90-minute documentary looking at her life and the legacy of her charity work.

In the documentary, the princes — aged 15 and 12 when their mother died — flick through leatherbound photo albums and discuss childhood memories, recalling their fun-loving mother hiding sweets in their socks and taking them on holidays to the beach and water park.

The pair said their mother had tried to give them a normal childhood, and expressed regret that they had rushed off the phone to continue playing with their cousins the last time she called them, hours before her fatal accident.

The planned broadcast of their mother’s voice-coaching tapes is expected to be deeply upsetting for the princes, who also spoke of their mother’s distress at being hunted by the paparazzi and losing her privacy.

The existence of the tapes has been known since 2001, when they were discovered in a police raid at the home of Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell.

Diana says she met the prince 13 times before they were married and said: “He’d ring me up every day for a week and then he wouldn’t speak to me for three weeks. Very odd.’’