Death of Diana ÔindustryÕ just grinds on and on

Difficult to believe that it is fourteen years since Princess Diana died in the crash in the tunnel in Paris. It is one of those moments for most of us when we can remember where we were – a bit like the assassination of John Kennedy.

In the case of Diana, in the meantime, just about every trick-o’-the-loop appears to have had an opinion about her death, or made a few euro, out of the memory. Those dreadfrul mugs with portraits continue to sell like hot cakes in London.

I was in London within two weeks of her death and the mood outside of Kensington Palace, with its enormous numbers of bouquets and tributes, was clearly of ordinary people taking control of a memory, even if it was a ‘folk memory’ and had an analysis that did not quite bear examination.

Variously she was being described as ‘the people’s princess,’ but I am always just a little suspicious when the people coining phrases of memory for anyone range from the tabloids, to street sellers of those selfsame commemorative mugs.

The tortured soul who emerged from books with which she – foolishly – co-operated and some of the television programmes with which she was involved, were indicative of someone immensely complex – a bit like the rest of us – and who might, betimes, have been better advised.

Someone, some day, may write the deifinitive history of her relationship with the press and, especially, with the papparazzi. She seemed to flit from simply performing for the latter to the point where she played a game of tag with them . . . as on the fateful night when she met her death in that tunnel crash.

In the case of the jackals from the papparazzi, the game played up-close-and-personal when it seemed to suit some crazy thought she entertained that this could just be switched on and off, and then switched to the kind of journalism which involved long-lenses and a wish on her part to be left alone.

Last week, just to show that what I call ‘the Diana industry’ is still grinding on, they ran a programme on TV3, which I presume originated in the ITV system somewhere, and which dubbed itself ‘Diana – The Witnesses in the Tunnel.’

The programme promotional material which was screened ceaselessly in the preceding days, seemed to promise that there would be new evidence as to precisely what went on in the Paris tunnel on the fateful night.

Instead, what we got was rehash of the variety which now seems to crop up all time time in a medium which consumes material with a voracious appetite. It’s the reason that channels have taken to picking what one might term harmless and utterly irrelevant pieces of information and building an hour-long programme around them.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.