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book] didn’t shock me because I was aware of the whole situation.’ The truth is very different. Far from being an intimate of the Princess, at the time she did not trust him because, as a butler based primarily at Highgrove with Prince Charles, he was inthe ‘enemy’ camp. In fact, when Burrell was in Kensington Palace while Diana was being taped for my book, she insisted that loud music should be played in case Burrell was listening at the keyhole.)
    At the time what struck Colthurst forcibly was the invasive atmosphere which suffused her home at Kensington Palace. In a world where everyone wanted a piece of her, the Princess had to shield her personal space with the tenacity of a guard dog, hiding anything about her inner life, such as her astrological charts or a book on eating disorders. Her first instinct, demonstrated by the fact that she had a shredder on her desk, was to trust no one – not staff, not courtiers and certainly not the royal family.
    While it is easy to scoff, in such an environment, where it seemed that every breath she took, every move she made was watched, monitored and commented upon, it did appear quite possible that Diana’s mail was being tampered with and her phones bugged. There was no doubt that she became noticeably more relaxed after the three of us had bought scrambler telephones to deter potential eavesdroppers.
    The Princess was also concerned about Colthurst cycling around London, not just for his safety, particularly when he was carrying around with him the interview tapes or the Spencer family photographs, which she passed to us in November 1991. Her anxiety was justified when one day in the summer of 1991 James was knocked off his bicycle by a car after one of his interview sessions with her at Kensington Palace.
    In this atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, the very fact that Diana was prepared to give frank and, at the time, deeply shocking interviews to an old friend for a writer she barely knew graphically demonstrates her desperation.
    For Colthurst, the role he had taken on, somewhat reluctantly, of conduit between the Princess and her biographer brought responsibilities and concerns far greater than he had expected. ‘At the time, as far as I was concerned,’ he explained, ‘I was helping a chum at a bloody and difficult part of her life. I was quite uncomfortable with the role and never envisaged that helping her would become virtually my full-time job for the next few years. I saw it asa one-off – that once she had said her piece she would then be free to make her own decisions. It didn’t happen like that.’
    In her emotionally fragile state Diana turned repeatedly to her friend and interviewer for guidance and encouragement, and soon James found himself with the added responsibilities of adviser, counsellor and occasional speechwriter, shadowing and pre-empting decisions made by her paid officials, notably her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, who was appointed in November 1991 after working in a similar capacity while he was her equerry.
    In the meantime, I was concentrating on the Princess’s biography, which meant that Colthurst and I had different, and at times diverging, agendas. For, naturally enough, in Colthurst’s mind where there was conflict between her needs and the book, Diana always took precedence. ‘Whereas the book was a means of her gaining recognition as an individual,’ he later observed, ‘my overriding concern was what she was going to do with her life and how she was going to run it.’ In many respects his most significant contribution to Diana’s life was not as a mere go-between for a book, but was in the help he gave her through the slow and painstaking process of shaping a new life and channelling away negative thoughts and emotions, and his encouragement to her to focus on a positive and productive future. It was work Diana was to continue with her therapist Susie Orbach, her astrologer Debbie Frank, and a loose-knit group