Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, has gone to the Press Complaints Commission over a News of the World splash headlined: ‘I had sex with Diana”.
Burrell’s lawyer has lodged a formal complaint with the PCC over the front-page story of 15 June, which continued across two double-page spreads inside the paper.
Media law specialist David Price said the piece, which is still visible on the NoW website, had been ‘repeated throughout the world’s media”.
The source was Burrell’s brother-in-law, Ron Cosgrove, who claimed the butler had told him that he was having an affair with the princess during a conversation in a pub in 1993.
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Price claimed the paper had failed to investigate Cosgrove’s claims and had not put the story to Burrell before publishing it.
‘The News of the World did not have sufficiently credible evidence to publish a story of this kind with such prominence,’Price said.
‘Its only interest was to publish a salacious and sensational story about Princess Diana.”
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