The results of the official investigation into just what happened to Princess Diana were released today. They make for depressingly mundane reading. No assassination, no fake death, no pregnany, no secret engagement, no plot full stop.
Setting out the results of his three-year, high-profile report into Diana's fatal car crash in Paris, Lord Stevens bluntly told reporters at a packed central London news conference: "This was a tragic accident."
If you buy the official story (and at least one person doesn't) she had the misfortune of getting into a car driven by someone who had too much to drink and couldn't handle the speed the car was going. A dull death made spectacular by the celebrity of one of the car's occupants. Princesses aren't supposed to die like this perhaps... but then again they aren't supposed to marry into loveless marriages and then make public television appearances for fuck knows what reason. At least not in the stories we grew up reading.
Then again those stories also only cost a couple of quid in Puffin paperback while the inquest into Diana's death has cost a cool £3m. Good job we don't have this kind of carry on every time someone ordinary dies.
Screengrab from Van Halen's Right Now
