Early in 1997 Tony and I met Diana, Princess of Wales. Maggie Rae, by then a partner at Mishcon de Reya, had been involved in her divorce, and Diana had told her that she wanted to meet Tony.

It was all conducted in the utmost secrecy. Maggie Rae invited her to her place for dinner, and Tony and I were invited, as well as Alastair [Campbell] and Fiona [Millar, his partner].

What most struck me, I remember, was how completely obsessed (Alastair) was by the idea that she fancied him. She was certainly flirting with him, much to Fiona's irritation, but every time she moved out of earshot he kept saying to Tony, “She really fancies me and she's only asked you so that she can see me.” Although he was doing it in a jokey way, such is his ego that part of him probably really wanted to believe it. She was certainly flirting with Alastair more than Tony.

Shortly after we moved into Number 10, Maggie Rae let us know that the Princess was keen to see him again and she wanted to bring William and Harry to Chequers. Alex Allan, the principal private secretary, nearly had apoplexy when he found out. It would be quite wrong, he said, for Tony to see Diana before he'd seen Prince Charles. So sometime in those few weeks, Tony did in fact see the Prince, and Diana and William duly turned up at Chequers one Sunday in early July.

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Again she was very relaxed, this time chatting with my mum, and being lovely with Kathryn [the Blairs' daughter]. She talked about how she would like to have more children and how she longed for a little girl. We sat there on the grass, with Kathryn tucked between Diana's knees, watching the three boys and Tony playing football on the north lawn.

That summer they holiday at Geoffrey Robinson's house. At 3am one day Tony takes a call...

I watched him as he listened, saying nothing.

“A car crash in Paris,” he said eventually. “She's in a coma. They don't think she'll pull through.” All I heard was Tony repeating, “I can't believe this. I can't believe this.” We were to say nothing to anyone. It would be announced to the press shortly.

Tony had agreed with Alastair that he should make a statement before morning service. Alastair was usually anti anything that involved the Church or God, but on this occasion even he agreed it might be appropriate.

The Catholic Church, St John Fisher in Sedgefield, was deemed inappropriate as there was nowhere for the press to stand, so we went to St Mary Magdalene in Trimdon...By the time we arrived the television cameras were in position, and Tony said what he did, and, it's fair to say, caught the mood of the nation with his “She was the people's princess”.

Now, of course, the success of the film The Queen has somehow resulted in it becoming the official record of that extraordinary week, but it wasn't quite like that. For example, from a pedantic perspective, the way that Number 10 was portrayed was completely wrong, not to mention me and Tony: I never swear and Tony is a good deal taller than Michael Sheen. But there are more serious points to be made.

For a start, I never felt there was the opposition from the Palace to what Tony was suggesting; in fact he had been asked to become involved by the Lord Chamberlain. Things were complicated because Robert Fellowes, whom I had met the day we first went to the Palace, was Diana's brother-in-law, married to her sister Jane. The family's main concern over those first few days was simply to protect the boys, because they were so young and so distressed, and they really didn't want them exposed to anything more. They weren't thinking beyond that.

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