BRITAIN:In the carnival of vanities that is the Diana inquest, yesterday's witness was the most exotic yet.
From the moment that Dodi al- Fayed's long-term personal masseuse and spiritual healer, Myriah Daniels, stepped into the witness box, asking: "Is this, like, being on the stand, or what? Okay?" and took the oath to "so help me, everybody's gods", it was a case of American verbosity versus the English bar's circumlocutions, with the US winning by a long head.
Carefully removing her chewing gum before giving evidence, she disclosed, perhaps most crucially for the inquests, that the driving of the chauffeur Henri Paul had terrified her when he took the couple's party, without Dodi and Diana, from Le Bourget airport earlier on their last day. He drove like that even though there were no paparazzi that she could see chasing their Range Rover.
"I honest to God didn't see any motorcycles at all. I was positive we were going to get killed on that drive. Henri Paul, he was driving way too fast and recklessly. He was like a maniac. With all due respect, he was probably a very nice man but he was s**t as a driver. And that is a fact."
Asked by Richard Keen QC, representing Paul's parents, why Kes Wingfield, the princess's bodyguard who was sitting in front, had said the driving had been appropriate and reasonable, Daniels replied: "Whatever his experience was, I will never forget it as long as I live." Daniels was Dodi's regular attendant for 10 years and accompanied him and Princess Diana on their last holiday.
"I have a natural gift for being able to fix the human body," she said. "I do treat the whole person . . . I am a minister of natural spiritualism. I work with people of every religion and culture." In the torrent of words that was her evidence, she succeeded in undermining Mohamed al-Fayed's conspiracy theories about the deaths of Diana and his son.
Daniels revealed that Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, had been given a nickname by the princess. "His father was pretty much always in contact with him. Diana would say: 'God is calling', and they'd both have a giggle." Was Diana pregnant? "She was not pregnant, period. Trust me, she was not pregnant. I know it for a fact . . . can we give her a little bit of respect and privacy there, please?"
Were they going to get married? "Look, nobody will ever know whether they would have hooked up. They had just met. They were having fun, getting to know each other . . . it was a brand new relationship. They were smitten with each other for sure."
Another of Diana's friends, Lucia Flecha de Lima, wife of the former Brazilian ambassador in London, insisted to the inquest that the princess never mentioned marrying Dodi and any fears she might have had for her life were not serious.