From the pavement where I was standing, in the covered pathway to the restaurant in Park Lane, there was not a paparazzo to be seen. Yet, according to the manager who had brought us the warning message, there was a pack of them out there.

Inside, sitting at the table where we had just finished lunch, was a worried waitress and the Princess of Wales. Outside, I was left looking through the haze of fumes to Marble Arch and back, unable to see the slightest bulge of Japanese plastic, the faintest glint of lens, the least sound of Italian-speaking, motorbike-driving paparazzo.

Somewhat shamefacedly, I returned to the table. Just as a precaution The Times driver was contacted and sent round to a side entrance. The Princess continued calmly to sip her bottled water and talk about herself, her husband, his family, her work, her problems and the complex cat's-cradle which the media wove between them all.

The date was May 18, 1994, not the worst of days for the then wife of the Prince of Wales but not a good day either. Even when she arrived at the restaurant, she had worn a quick smile and a bad-news frown. There was no preamble. Her face was stretched into the faintest pattern of lines and circles and her question was wholly rhetorical: "Well, do we know how this particular story got into the papers this morning?"

A Perrier with the Princess

Peter Stothard, former Editor of The Times, recalls a discussion with Diana about memos, mistresses and the media

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She did know. The subject of the day was the Princess's "grooming expenses" which, according to the Daily Mail and others, were higher than Pounds 3,000 a week. "My husband said it at a dinner party last week, where it got to Ross Benson and to Nigel Dempster and now there's all this stuff," she complained. Most of the "stuff" had been helpful hints from journalists about how much her various suits and shoes might have cost and how readers might replicate them at lower prices. "No one mentions all HIS stuff", she smiled dryly, "the bracelet at Christmas for me and the necklace, bought at the same time on the same bill from the same shop, which I never see."

I paused - in some surprise. We had spoken for barely five minutes. It was already clear that this was not to be a wide-ranging conversation. Whatever else is said about Diana, Princess of Wales, in this dreadful week, let it not be said that she lacked sophistication about the media, her use of it and its use of her. She could be as "on message" as the most disciplined determined New Labour apparatchik. She was as charming that day as everyone always says that she is. But she did not move outside the lines that she had most clearly defined.

Inside those lines were the very aspects of her life which most people keep outside in discussion with newspaper editors - her husband, his mistress, her in-laws, her own fragile sense of herself. Within minutes I felt I was talking to someone I knew. By the time that she had toyed her way through her foie gras and lamb, I knew things about her that I did not know about my closest friends.

I should admit now that, before this lunch, I had a very low level of interest in what I would have called at that time "our Royal soap opera". I assumed, wrongly, that a large amount of the journalism generated by the juvenile Windsors was misleading, false, fourth-hand, or worse. I did not immediately accept the analysis which she set out with such care. But this was long before the Panorama interview. To read what seemed like recycled gossip about iconic characters was one thing. To hear so directly from the central player was quite another. I presume that many others in our business had the same experience.

The Princess complained of how her husband's family divided the charity world between its long-established members - a Duchess for hospices, a Duke for animals, a Princess for children. Occasionally twisting the stem of an empty glass, she described how hard it was for her to enter where her real interests led and where the real demand for her was so high.

I had not expected her to be fond of the Dimbleby biography of her husband. But it was different again to hear her views directly. "Did you know that it originally was supposed to contain nothing about our relationship at all? How were readers supposed to think that the children came? By immaculate conception?"

"By divine right of kings," I ventured, trying with difficulty to enter into the spirit of this dialogue. "Oh great, by DI-vine right," she giggled. "That's just what did happen."

The speed with which she ran through her list of subjects would not have disgraced a bank chairman anxious to catch the Ascot train. One moment she was on the subject of John Major's allegedly feeble response to the "could Camilla be queen?" question: "Major and my husband are both very alike, quite BFs these days, always seeing each other." The next moment it was how photographers could help her to present her case to the people. Next it was how stuffiness and protocol prevented her from going to John Smith's funeral: "It may not have been a full state occasion but it became a powerful public event and no one from the Royal Family was there."

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