American media analyst Philip Stone on the declining sales of Britain's red-tops: "The tabloids have never recovered from losing Princess Diana. Her picture every day on the front page guaranteed loyal readers. No one has taken her place."
Looking at today's papers, you might imagine only Diana can take Diana's place. The increasingly farcical inquest is given acres of space, with every pop paper running front page blurbs urging readers to turn to spreads inside. The "story" also got major billing on the TV news bulletins last night.
I wonder if Lord Justice Scott goes home every night to a stiff whiskey before a prolonged bout of uncontrollable laughter at the fatuity of the whole thing. Secrets that aren't secrets. Allegations by one set of "friends" quickly countered by denials by other sets of "friends". She was pregnant. No she wasn't. She was going to marry Dodi Fayed. No she wasn't. She was trying to make her surgeon lover Hasnat Khan jealous. No she wasn't. And so it goes on, nonsense day by day.
Yet the media are lapping all this up. There is precious little genuine public desire to know, as the poor attendances in court every day testify. (The only people who regularly turn up are cranks, it would appear). So why is this happening? Because Mohammed Al Fayed, using his wealth, forced the issue.
He employed the previously sainted liberal QC, Michael Mansfield, to ensure that every legal avenue was explored in order to pressure the authorities into staging the inquest. Meanwhile, Fayed pre-judged the situation by consistently insisting that the deaths of Diana and his son were murders as the result of some conspiracy.
No matter that, as murder plots go, this would have been the most bizarre hit-and-miss method to have employed. No matter that, had she and Dodi been wearing seat-belts, they probably would have survived. No matter that, if the driver had been less drunk (or more careful, or more intelligent), it might never have happened. Did we need an inquest more than 10 years after the event to tell us that Fayed's conspiracy theories are utter rubbish? More pertinently, why have editors who largely agree that Fayed is wrong, that the inquest is a farce, given so much time and space and resources to such baloney?
Back to Mr Stone. It's because Diana sells. Well, does she? The inquest began at the beginning of October. Sales figures from October, November and December, compared to the same months the year before, were down. Sales figures of tabloids compared to the immediate months before were also down. No Diana uplift there.
Isn't it therefore time for editors to turn their backs on the Diana inquest. It is an embarrassment that people of the calibre of Scott and Mansfield are even involved. And, whatever the outcome, it won't change anyone's minds. The conspiracy theories will continue, because conspiracy theorists will see any verdict that finds otherwise yet further "proof" of a conspiracy.
