Two mourners, signing themselves only as Gill and Ruth, laid a floral tribute outside the Harrods department store in London. It read: "Thank you Dodi for making our Princess happy again." As thousands of floral tributes were placed outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and Diana's home at Kensington Palace, Harrods announced that it would open a book of condolences for people to sign today.
Mr Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian owner of Harrods, issued his own heartfelt statement following the death of Diana, his son Dodi and their chauffeur. The statement said: "This is an appalling and quite needless tragedy. The world has lost a princess who is simply irreplaceable. Mr alFayed has lost his beloved eldest son. Mr and Mrs al-Fayed are devastated by their loss and share the sorrow of the princess's family. Mr al-Fayed heard of his son's death before he left his home in Surrey by helicopter to fly to Paris."
The role of the al-Fayed family in the British establishment has been a chequered one. For several years, Mr Mohamed alFayed was embroiled in controversy following the rejection of his application for a British passport, which was seen as a direct snub to him by the Conservative government. Most recently, however, he revealed the extent to which members of the Tory Party were indebted to him when details of the cash for questions affair were publicised by the Guardian.
Perhaps angered by the refusal by some sections of the Establishment to accept him, even when he regularly attended race meetings with Queen Elizabeth, Mr al-Fayed revealed that he had paid the former Tory MP Mr Neil Hamilton thousands of pounds in cash in return for asking questions in the House of Commons about the sale of Harrods in the 1980s.
Mr al-Fayed's revelations about the "cash for questions" affair rocked the Tory Party to its foundations. When Mr Jonathan Aitken was implicated in Mr alFayed's revelations he brought a £2 million libel action against the Guardian. He later lost the action when it was revealed that as part of payments from the family he had stayed at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, which is owned by the al-Fayeds.
Once tipped as a future Tory leader, Mr Aitken's reputation was destroyed and his infamous quote, that the "simple sword of truth" would prove his innocence, came back to haunt him to the tune of u2 £2 million.
Earlier this year, when Mr al-Fayed pledged u1 £1 million to launch a campaign to "clean up" British politics, a spokesman for his "People's Trust" said the British establishment had wrongly labelled him as a vindictive man.
Instead, he described Mr al-Fayed as "a person who, I think, the majority of public opinion believes has been hard done by. Through political spite he has been denied his citizenship and the public response to him has been overwhelmingly favourable."
Dodi al-Fayed's wealth, apart from that provided by his billionaire father, came from his work as a film producer. Although the extent to which he became personally involved in the production of films was limited, he provided financial support to a number of Hollywood productions, including Chariots of Fire, The World According to Garp and Hook. Educated in Switzerland, his mother, Samira, was the sister of billionaire Adnan Kashoggi.
His family life had been touched repeatedly by tragedy. Both Samira, who separated from his father just months after Dodi's birth, and his grandmother died young. Samira's second husband died in a car crash, as did his stepfather and an aunt.
Despite his wealth, friends described the 41-year-old Mr al-Fayed as very quiet, even aloof at times. He travelled extensively on his father's yachts, but his expensive lifestyle produced an "embarrassing" trail of lawsuits over unpaid bills. A spokesman acknowledged before his death that he had bounced cheques and failed to pay the rent of several luxury homes in California.
His critics described him as a collector of celebrities. "He would invite them over for dinner and just sit back and listen. He didn't say much." His father, who not only owned Harrods and the Ritz in Paris but 11 other homes across the world, defended his son's exuberant lifestyle on several occasions and welcomed his romance with the Princess of Wales; he had asked the media to leave the couple in peace to explore their feelings for one another.