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Di 'the perfect cash crop'
24/06/2007 22:58 - (SA)
London - Princess Diana's brother and
sons fear she will always be the perfect "cash crop".
With the 10th anniversary of her death looming in August,
bookstands and magazine racks are already awash with tales of
"The People's Princess" as documentaries rehash her final days.
Her family says that Diana, once the world's most
photographed woman and epicentre of a whole celebrity industry,
will never be allowed to rest in peace.
"I can never foresee a day when there won't be an interest
in Diana," said her brother Charles Spencer who in his funeral
oration for Diana castigated the media for hounding her.
"In her life, Diana was a cash crop for a lot of people in
terms of writing books and selling stories," Spencer told
Reuters, bemoaning the commercialisation of so many "kiss and
tell" Diana stories. Genius at manipulating media
But, at a decade's distance, Diana's legacy is not all
positive.
An undoubted genius at manipulating the media, she had a
paradoxical attitude to fame, bemoaning the paparazzi for
pursuing her while at the same time assiduously cultivating
tabloid contacts.
Sarah Bradford, author of an authoritative biography that
avoids any gushing praise of Diana, said of Diana's attitude to
fame: "She found it suffocating and she wanted a private life.
"But the other side of her wanted the celebrity and she would
call up reporters herself."
"She could be funny, witty, a lovely friend. She could also
turn on people, she could be cruel, she could be hysterical,"
Bradford added of Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris
in 1997. 'Di-mania may never end
Her sons William and Harry, who are staging a memorial
concert next Sunday in London to mark what would have been her
46th birthday, seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that
"Di-mania" may never end.
"There are always people out there who want to make money,"
William told NBC News in an interview to publicise the concert
starring Elton John, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart and Duran Duran.
William, second in line to the throne, is worried that
people are beginning to think negatively about his late mother
and hopes the pop concert will redress the balance.
Making money out of Diana is still a viable proposition and
Britain's leading public relations guru Max Clifford, a master
at placing celebrity tales in tabloids, said: "I think this will
go on and on."
"A load of people have made quite a living out of Diana -
so-called media experts and so-called friends. Ninety percent of
them hardly knew her and weren't her friends," he told Reuters.
Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, who spent two years
researching the princess and interviewing more than 200 people
for her book The Diana Chronicles, told Reuters: "People make
money where they can and I guess they feel so much money can be
made out of the princess."
- Reuters
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South Africa
