heers were heard up and down the land. Halley's comet made an unscheduled appearance in the ethereal night sky. In very heaven, angelic choirs rang out. A saviour had been born. A light to lighten the world. But enough about me. For this paragraph at least.

In my universally acclaimed funeral address, I aimed to speak for my sister. The real Diana. For only I truly knew her. She had the heart of a lion. And I had a glut of cliches. Yet when Diana had swept so triumphantly into the arena of royal life, I was but a callow youth awash with hormones and gripped by the self-centredness of adolescence. Nothing much has changed. Yet I know, with all my heart, that Diana would have wanted me to tell our story.

Why now, you may ask? The answer is simple. I could do with the money. And with the 30th anniversary of the most tragic death in human history approaching, I wanted to get in before someone like Amol Rajan did.

Quite simply, the Diana I knew is not the Diana that has been portrayed up till now. We have been told she had an unhappy childhood. But let me say, we were both the secure recipients of parental love.

Never were we more content than when our parents separated. Or when we were carted off to boarding schools that thrived on neglect. And we adored the way our father was miserable for so much of our lives, his latter years made still more miserable by marrying the venomous Raine.

Back to me. I was in Cape Town when I heard Diana had died. At first I could not comprehend what had happened. I was stunned, watching the TV as the story unfurled.

The initial reports had been more hopeful. She was merely slightly injured. My lips curled as the commentators implied that she had got what she deserved for betraying the royal family.

Then, when her death was announced, they had to change their tone. That will teach the media to be mean about my sister, I thought. My lips grimly broke into a grim smile.

Quick pause as I go into yet more unimaginably dull guff about our privileged childhood and how we were always happy except when we weren't. Then to remember how Prince Charles had sounded so giddily elated when he had phoned me to offer his congratulations. "Get in there," he had said. "Finally I can be left in peace with my top bit on the side."

With that, the cold finality of death struck home. Never again would my heart soar at seeing my beloved Diana alive again. On the plane back to London, my thoughts turned to her eulogy. We would need someone utterly brilliant. Someone who could capture the vibrant essence of Diana and represent her true blood family. One of far more noble lineage than the House of Windsor.

With that, I realised it could only be me who could be entrusted with such a solemn duty. And I would do a lot better than Norman St John-Stevas, who had ruined my father's service with his crass middle-class antics.

Time now for a digression into some pointless filler about the Spencer family history. How for many centuries we had fulfilled our duty of opening fetes and losing money because working for a living was beneath us. How Diana and I had once gone swimming with Prince Andrew. Even then he had been even more stupid than the average member of the royal family, and I remember thinking that one day he would get into trouble for hanging around with a paedophile.

Such carefree lives we all led back then. Apart from the eating disorders and the other undiagnosed mental health conditions. Little did I know that Diana's life would be ended by a tabloid press. The paparazzi who chased her down the Alma tunnel were all wearing Piers Morgan masks. How ironic that Diana, the goddess of hunting, should be the most hunted woman on the planet. By the way, that's a line you might recall I wrote in my superb oration. Genius, isn't it?

I'm not sure who nominated me point man for liaising with the royal family – I'm guessing it might have been me. I recall other disturbing conversations with the prince. "You're so lucky your dad has died," he confided. "I wish my mum would. They just treat me like a child. I even have a footman to lay out my electric train set each morning. I'd love to do it for myself." I cut short the conversation, my mind once more returning to the magnificence of the eulogy I was shortly to deliver to a stunned world.

But the pressure from the palace was relentless. Time and again we were told that the Spencers had always been too common for the Windsors. The funeral arrangements soon took on a darker, more sombre tone.

"William and Harry must walk behind Diana's coffin," Colonel Ross insisted. That wasn't going to happen, I firmly replied, firmly. "I think you will find it will," Ross snapped menacingly with menace. The Prince of Wales needs a human shield in case people heckle him. One of my happiest memories of the funeral procession was a lone piper in the crowd playing the ancient lament, "Who's that wanker in the crown?"

"Don't worry too much," said Prince Charles. "Everyone will have forgotten about her soon enough." I couldn't believe my ears.

"No one will ever forget Diana," I tartly snapped, tartly.

"Diana who?"

All such a long way from the fairytale that had begun in 1980. Then the country had been in thrall to the fact that the future Earl Spencer was about to become brother-in-law to the next king of England. Diana, though, was already a broken butterfly, crushed by a man who had told her he would never love her but would marry her because he couldn't really get out of it. "Thing is," he said. "Not only do I adore Camilla with all my heart but you're actually a bit podgy." How I wish I had been there to say: "You're no oil painting yourself, sausage fingers."

Diana later told me she had sobbed, sobbingly to my father that she could never marry a man who didn't love her. But my father wouldn't countenance such a thing. The Spencers always do their duty dutifully. Till death us do part.

And so the inevitable train of events that would lead to her death were put in train. She was to be the royal family's sacrifice to an insatiably, ravenous tabloid press who would not relent until she lay dying in the back of a car in Paris.

"Oh Carlos," Diana said to me.

"Oh Duch," I replied, replyingly

"Oh Carlos."

"Oh Duch."

I find it almost too unbearably unbearable to recall some of the all too fleeting moments we had together. Though I sincerely believe that Diana was always at her happiest when she was with me. And we were so in tune with each other that silently we often didn't need to talk.

Only once did I try to dissuade her from getting a divorce, but she quickly shut me up. I like to think that Diana, like me, would be on to her fourth marriage by now, had she lived. Then we could have had a good old moan about our exes. And how expensive they are.

Now we get to the most solemn moment of the entire book. I find it incredible that no one in all these years has stopped to enquire how I felt when making the most celebrated eulogy in the history of mankind. Do I not count for something?

Only Tony Blair fleetingly acknowledged the nation's debt of gratitude to me. "Diana will always be the People's Princess." He paused, for effect. Clearly he had learned from my oratorical oratory. "And you will be the People's Earl."

My years as a journalist for NBC filing meaningless stories that no one had ever watched was the perfect training for someone about to write a eulogy to end all eulogies. Have I mentioned that I was writing the eulogy?

Once I was satisfied that I had achieved perfection, a car drove me to the chapel where Diana's coffin was resting. It was almost as if she was tired of life. There I read her my eulogy. And at that moment, the sun shone through the stained glass and crowds bowed down in the streets, and from the coffin came Diana's disembodied voice: "You're a leg, Carlos."

The funeral passed almost in a daze. I remember Elton John singing Candle in the Wind and thinking: "Who is this idiot who has been brought in as my warm-up act?" After all, this was a day for me as much as for her. As for the eulogy? Let's just say that the whole world bowed down to remember both me and Diana. Though let's be clear, I was doing this for William and Harry. In the same way that this book is dedicated to them too.

And so we come to the end of this book. Who knows what lies ahead for me? More divorces probably. But I can face the world knowing I have done right by my sister. Her memory will live for ever. Who knows what she might have become? The first lady of the US? Nelson Mandela's wife? But at least she can rest in peace knowing that in death, at least, she had my eulogy. The eulogy which is mine.

AAAGH. MAKE THIS STOP.

Digested read, digested: Swanning Around