Diana inquest latest: Burrell humiliated

Paul Burrell, the Princess of Wales's one-time butler, spent a "ghastly" hour at the inquest into the death of Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed yesterday when it emerged that the "secret" he refused to disclose to the court on Monday was not so secret after all. A letter from the princess, disclosed at the end of Burrell's 2003 book, A Royal Duty, spoke of a secret which he said he would never reveal. On Monday Burrell, who has made a significant fortune from his association with Diana, refused to tell the inquest jury what that secret was, before claiming he could not remember.

After being ordered by the exasperated coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, to go to his former home in Cheshire to retrieve documents to prove his story, Burrell returned to court yesterday with a huge sheaf of papers under his arm. But when questioned by Michael Mansfield QC, the former butler said that the "secret" was either the fact that the Princess was looking for a house in California or for property in South Africa. Both matters have already been extensively discussed by other witnesses. Mansfield suggested that his evidence had been "all over the place" and questioned whether anything Burrell had said could be trusted.

"Having examined the matter it doesn't seem to me that they are secrets at all," said Lord Baker. "Both pieces of information are fairly and squarely in the public domain one way or another, and one of them indeed appears in your book The Way We Were."

Burrell was also forced to admit that The Way We Were, his first book about his relationship with the Princess, contained inaccuracies. At one point, under cross-examination, with Mohamed Fayed grinning in the seat behind him, the humiliated butler exclaimed: "Quite frankly, it's been horrid. It's been quite disgraceful, actually ... I didn't expect it to be so ghastly."

Earlier in the day Diana's divorce lawyer Maggie Rae, a member of the princess's legal team from Mishcon de Reya, said Diana believed the Queen would abdicate. Rae also described the princess telling her that on separating from Charles she led a "lonely" existence in Kensington Palace, spending her weekends heating her own food in a microwave.

The inquest was also told how Tony Blair "flirted" with Diana at a dinner party at Rae's home in January 1997. The jury was read extracts from The Blair Years, the diaries of Number 10 spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, who also attended the dinner party with his partner Fiona Millar and Cherie Blair. The inquest was told how the then-Opposition leader "couldn't work out whether to flirt with her or treat her like a visiting dignitary" so he "ended up doing both". At one point during the evening, Diana went into the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher and made Campbell a cup of tea.