“The situation was surreal”

Detailing how the young women, ages 19 and 20, rejoiced to have one on the tabloids, she added: “Interestingly, none of us, including Diana, got any help.

“I don’t know who could have helped us, but maybe there was someone. A PR or someone from the palace, I don’t know.

“The only thing I remember being told we had to look for bombs under our cars. Unfortunately, neither of us had read the bomb detection manual, so we didn’t know where to start. The situation was surreal. “

Speaking to a small crowd outside the apartment today, she said: “It was at Coleherne Court that Diana learned to play cat and mouse with the press, with support from our roommates.

“We formed a team that together started to play this crazy game of avoiding the press.

“We thought it was really funny back then, and Diana reveled in it.”

One of Diana’s favorite occasions, she said, was before a weekend date with Prince Charles when she escaped without the press noticing thanks to a false start.

“She took her suitcase and came around the corner and sat in the car,” Ms. Clarke said. “All the press jumped in their cars and got the engines running.

“Then she went ‘oops’, in a way a little too dramatic like she forgot something, got out of the car, came back inside, picked up a second suitcase, went down the stairs and walked away. got into a taxi and went in this [the other] direction.

“I think it was 1:30 am when the doorbell finally rang and a sad voice said ‘is Diana coming out yet?’.

“She was delighted with this success.”

Ms Clarke added: “Later in life, when she gave up her royal status, it saddened me to realize that she no longer had her friends around her and that the game of chat and chat. mouse has become very lonely and not so funny. “

“I know she would love to have her own” blue plaque

The blue plaque is now visible on the wall of the Coleherne Court building, where Diana lived when she worked at a nursery.