THE FIRST grown-up magazine I ever bought was Company, dated March 1982. I was 16 and the reason I bought it was because it had Princess Diana's face on the front.

Like most people in the known universe, or so it seemed then, I was curious about this pretty, funny girl, who seemed to have the perfect life - a fairy Princess with all the best modern bits.

True, her Prince was an old stick with sticking-out ears. But imagine having all that money to spend on clothes and shoes and having your hair done every week and having yachts and Rollers and palaces and things. And look at the wedding. Don't laugh, meringue dresses and tiaras were very in, back then.

Me and my best mate Sarah were suitably impressed. Sarah bought a frilly-necked shirt and I purchased some shoes with a velvet bow on them.

Why WERE we so interested? Probably because Di was the first international celebrity of our lifetimes, unless you counted Jackie O, who was our mums' fashion idol.

There was no Hello magazine or OK! back then. No Heat, Closer, 3am in the Daily Mirror or shows like X-Factor or Big Brother to fuel the public's appetite for minor celebs, because there were relatively few of them.

And Diana was no minor, she was bang on the money, triple A-List from the start. No wonder she fired our imagination.

Everyone wanted a piece of her. Put Diana's face on the front of your mag or rag and you could guarantee a 25 per cent leap in sales. Never mind Kate Moss - Diana remains the greatest cover-girl the world has ever seen.

Like everyone else, me and Sarah believed that everything on Planet Diana was absolutely fabulous. Even when shots of her wandering lonelier than a cloud along Studland Beach one New Year were published. Even when the stories began to leak out that all was not well.

She was always smiling, wasn't she? I can still remember the surprise I felt when a mate who worked for a red-top national told me "Diana's got a boyfriend". This was the late 1980s. Boyfriend? "Yes, a bloke in the Army." Ridiculous. "Well, I'm only telling you what I've heard," he said.

Of course it was true, as were the astonishing rumours about Charles and Camilla. Diana's fairytale was turning Grimm but who could have forseen what would happen in the Pont d'Alma tunnel, ten years ago on Friday?

Who, also, could have forseen the reaction to it; the flowers, the eulogies, the outpouring of public grief that flowed endlessly and relentlessly for months after her burial.

I cried all the way through her funeral and so, whether they admit now or not, did millions of others. Of course, as Helen Mirren tartly points out in The Queen, we didn't know her. But that didn't matter, people felt they did. Give or take the palaces and tiaras, her life had been like many other people's: victim of a broken home, mediocre school career, kids, marriage breakdown, broken dreams. Her problems were the People's Problems. And now we had her two poor boys, walking behind her coffin.

I only saw her once, covering her visit to the Bournemouth's Anglo-European College of Chiropractic in July 1991.

Tall, stunning and absolutely at ease - well, so are lots of people. But Diana had star quality, giggling, nattering, holding hands and insisting on pushing her way through the crowds to greet the dinner ladies who were hanging out of their kitchen windows, in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Watching the crowd as she moved towards them, it was as though they'd had their faces illuminated by a giant torch.

Many years before he grew bitter and jealous and obsessed with not being top-dog, Prince Charles spoke about "The wonderful effect my dear wife has on everyone."

It was an effect he grew to dread and it's an effect that hasn't abated. Diana may be dead but her ghost has haunted everything, from the trial of her former butler, to the wedding of her former husband. It has certainly spooked the Queen and her court. We look for Diana's echo in Kate Middleton and her antithesis in the hapless Camilla.

As the memorial service looms at the Guards Chapel on Friday, the same chapel where Camilla wed her first husband, we will be invited to remember Diana officially, the way the Establishment wants us to.

Then, they must be hoping, she will finally be at rest, in as much as she won't keep upsetting the royal applecart from beyond her island grave.

It won't happen. At her funeral the Archbishop of Canterbury described her as "Someone by whom we were all intrigued" and millions still are.

"What was it about her?" asked Time Magazine, in one of the thousands of pieces which attempted to unpack her unique appeal. "Why", asked Time, "Could we not avert our eyes from her?"

Maybe it's simply this - Diana was a complete one-off, the like of which we will never see again. It's corny but true: the candle burned out long ago but her legend never will.

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