Princess Diana told a friend she needed marriage to Dodi Fayed “like a rash on my face”, her inquest has heard.


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The princess – who was killed in a Paris car crash on 31 August, 1997, along with Dodi – confined in Lady Annabel Goldsmith about her worries of getting wed again, around the time rumours were rife the couple were planning to marry.

Lady Annabel – who raised the subject when Diana came to stay at her country home – told the jury at the High Court: “It had been splashed all over the papers. I said to her laughably, ‘you are not going to do anything silly are you?’

“I meant you are not going to do anything silly like rushing off and eloping or getting married and she said ‘I would need marriage like a rash on my face.’ It was a very Diana expression.

“I took it to mean that she was not serious about marriage to Dodi. She might have been having a wonderful time with him, I’m sure, but I thought her remark that she needed marriage like a rash meant that she was not serious about it.”

However, Lady Annabel said she was in no doubt Diana was having a “wonderful” time with Dodi.

Meanwhile, the Muslin heart surgeon widely regarded as Diana’s greatest love reluctantly decided not to marry the princess because he believed their cultural differences would have torn them apart.

Dr Hasnat Khan – who ended his relationship with Diana just months before her death – told his family: “If I married her, our marriage would not last for more than a year. We are culturally so different from each other. She is from Venus and I am from Mars. If it ever happened, it would be like a marriage from two different planets.”