With the Diana Inquest reaching a gripping conclusion and the imminent presence of Mohamed al Fayed expected on the stand, a dizzying array of witnesses are falling like ninepins.

Fayed’s head of security, John Macnamara, has admitted he lied over Henri Paul’s drinking on the night. He now confesses that he had two Ricards in the hotel and possibly much more when he went off duty for three hours.

Michael Cole, former Royal Correspondent of the BBC, now with Al Fayed, was completely tripped up by Lord Justice Scott Baker, the Coroner, when his testimony didn’t match what he had said in the days after the crash.

Lord Stevens, author of the British police report on the crash, has demanded an apology from the Al Fayed team for accusing him of “not doing his job”, and for having been “got at” by sinister forces.

A former spy, Richard Tomlinson, said the death was similar to one cooked up at MI6 for the former Communist leader of Serbia. Tomlinson later revealed that God had told him he was the “second coming of Jesus”.

No wonder the Coroner is getting increasingly irritated by the quality of testimony at the inquest.

Both bodyguards on the night have questioned the Fayed version of events, and Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, was found to have made claims over evidence that were not true.

It seems Burrell has now been forced to shut down his website following his humiliating appearance at the inquest. He attracted so much “hate mail” that he decided to batten down the hatches.

A friend is reported as saying, “So many people have sent messages to the site criticising Paul that he’s had to take it down. It’s shocked him.”

Burrell admitted to copying Diana’s personal correspondence to preserve it for its “historical importance”. He subsequently used extracts for his best-selling books about life with the Princess.

With friends like these, no wonder Diana was all at sea in the last few months of her life.

Enough of the monkeys, we now await the organ grinder with barely suppressed anticipation.

In a new book, Diana, The Inquiry They Never Published Chris Lafaille, a former Paris Match journalist, is claiming that Diana was “nine to 10 weeks pregnant at the time she died”.

The author says that “The document dated August 31 1997 was sent to the then Minister of the Interior Jean-Pierre Chevenement [and others]. … It has never been claimed or proved to be a fake.”

Several questions are raised by this assertion :

1. Diana stayed with her closest friend Rosa Monckton just days before she holidayed with the Fayeds and her death in Paris. Rosa provided incontrovertible proof that Diana was not pregnant then. I won’t quote her words as they were very personal, but they are on the record.

2. The French Judge Herve Stephan would have seen this document in his four-year investigation, which stated that she was not pregnant. Lord Stevens’s three-year investigation also came to the same conclusion.

3. Who is funding this journalist? Who wrote the document and has the journalist been given access to it. Or is it just more planted hearsay like so many of the so called “facts” of this case?

We know that as soon as Diana’s bodyguard regained consciousness, Ritz people were coaching him in what to say.

This case is now a toxic pond of confusion, designed to leave everything up in the air so no verdict can ever be reached.

Update : A spokeman for Paris Public Hospitals has said that the letter is a forgery which was first circulated just after Diana’s death.

“Examination of this document has established with absolute certainty that it is a fake,” he said. “Many of the medics who treated Diana remain at the hospital, and all deny the claims contained in this forged letter.”

You couldn’t make it up. Yet another coroner has resigned from the interminable inquest for Diana, Princess of Wales, which has yet to get underway 10 years after the event in question.

Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has walked away from the case citing lack of experience. Is the obvious cause, though, the constant delaying tactics of Mohamed Al Fayed’s legal team, which would clearly like to whack the inquest into the long grass forever?

Butler-Sloss will be replaced by one of Britain’s most experienced judges, Lord Justice Scott Baker. Already delayed to October, the inquest is now unlikely to get started even then because of the mountain of case notes the new coroner has to master.

Why the delay? Initially, it was the long French inquiry, which found that the car crash that killed Diana and Dodi was caused by the driver, Henri Paul, who was found to be a long-term alcoholic.

A British inquiry was then set up under Lord Stevens which came to the same conclusion after a meticulous investigation lasting three years.

The inquest will finally draw a line under the tragedy, especially for those accused of conspiring to murder the Princess. Once the inquest has delivered its verdict, the facts will be clear and we can all move on.

Tomorrow, Monday, Prince William will report for duty as an officer in the Household Cavalry. Second Lieutenant William Wales will enter the regiment’s barracks near Windsor Castle, where Prince Harry is also based with the Blues and Royals.

It’s unclear whether this will interfere with William’s plans for Kate Middleton’s 25th birthday. She is reported to be disappointed that he didn’t turn up to the Middleton’s Scottish retreat over the New Year period. They were, however, on the phone “non-stop”.

Also on Monday, the formal inquest into Princess Diana’s death reopens after a lengthy police investigation under Lord Stevens ruled that the crash was an accident and that she and Dodi Fayed were not victims of an elaborate murder plot.

Dodi’s father, Mohamed, has already called for “a people’s jury” to decide the outcome, but this will not happen. Most people now realize he’s just trying to shift the blame from his own organization, which was responsible for the arrangements that killed Diana.

On Tuesday, Kate Middleton celebrates her 25th birthday. The itinerary is not yet public, but there’s a lot of speculation around that a July 19 wedding will be announced on this day.