More pain for Diana family as butler treads stage
 

Just when they may have thought they could relax from a spate of embarrassing revelations about their late mother, the family of Diana Princess of Wales must brace for more as her former butler takes to the London stage. Paul Burrell, who described himself as Diana's "rock" during her troubled marriage to and subsequent divorce from heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, has already become a best seller with his tell-all book "A Royal Duty."

He is now planning to stage a one man show "Paul Burrell: In His Own Words" at the upmarket Theater Royal in London's Drury Lane on June 20.

"In sharing my memories with a theater audience, I want to illustrate her magic, explain the truths and dispel the myths," he said.

"I am greatly looking forward to the evening, and explaining what has happened to me -- both the good and the bad," he added in a statement issued through a publicity company.

Diana died in a Paris car crash in August 1997, sending Britons into a frenzy of mourning.

Burrell was put on trial in 2002 charged with stealing hundreds of her belongings but the charges were dramatically dropped when Queen Elizabeth suddenly remembered he had told her he was keeping them safe.

The move prompted speculation Burrell had secrets-a-plenty to spill -- a theory proved right in a subsequent series of newspaper articles and then in his book.

He has since kept up a steady trickle of accusations including, most recently, a charge that Diana claimed that Prince Charles made a secret pact with his father to dump her just five years into their marriage.

He also said she believed there was a plot to kill her in a car crash months before her actual death. His revelations have brought him a fortune -- the book has sold 600,000 copies in hardback and is about to be issued in paperback, and he was reputedly paid a six-figure sum by the Daily Mirror newspaper.

But they have earned him the detestation of Princes William and Harry -- the children of the woman he said he adored.

Burrell seems unlikely to bridge that gulf in next month's one night stand show which will be part monologue and part question-and-answer with the audience.
--Reuters