HER FINAL MOMENTS

The world was shocked when it was announced that Princess Diana had been killed in a high-speed crash, alongside her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, in Paris in the early hours of August 31, 1997. But no-one was more surprised than the man who had first rendered medical care to the dying princess.

Frederic Mailliez was an off-duty doctor driving home through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel when he came across the crash site. It wasn’t until the next day when he saw the princess had died on the news that he realised the “beautiful stranger” he’d helped was her.

“I was astounded,” he told the MailOnline in their podcast series, Last Days of Diana.

Similarly, Catholic priest Yves-Marie Clochard-Bossuet, who was the acting duty officer for Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on the night of the accident, thought he had been “pranked” when he received a call to come sit by “Princess Diana’s bedside”.

Dianas driver, Colin Tebbutt, who was in London at the time of her death, quickly jumped on the first flight he could get to Paris, along with butler Paul Burrell.

“There was no question of leaving Diana’s recovery to the establishement. She had nothing to do with the palace anymore,” Tebbutt told the publication. “She was our boss and it was up to us to look after her still,” he explained. The driver made the journey back to the UK with Diana and Charles on a Royal Air Force jet. A picture of her sons and some rosary beads from Mother Teresa were placed with the princess in her coffin.