Di & Dodi dead 31 August 1997
	'We need an excuse, Bruce.' Wayne said. 'What we're looking for here is someone else to take the blame.' - Ben Elton, Popcorn

I woke up at about ten minutes to eight this morning to discover that the Princess of Wales had died in a car crash in Paris. Actually, it took a few minutes to find this out; when you land in the middle of a news story as big as this, it usually takes a while to orientate yourself, to find landmarks you can recognise. Thankfully at that time in the morning, Radio 4 was well aware that many of its listeners would be in this position, and was frequently repeating the background to the story. Actually, at that time in the morning, Radio 4 didn't have a lot else to do. It had reporters scattered across the country in key locations, waiting for the country to wake up and speculating on what would happen when it did, but even it realised that this was tedious if overdone.

At the same time as they reported Diana's death, they also reported Dodi Al Fayed's. Shortly afterwards I learnt that there had been a third person in the car - the driver - who'd also died. Oddly enough, it was a full two hours before I discovered that there had been a fourth person in the car - Trevor Rhys-Jones, the bodyguard - who had survived. The living in this case were very much less newsworthy than the dead.

I don't think I've ever really had much time for the Princess of Wales ever since that interview for Panorama, where she came across as a rather superficial person, who thought herself far more important than I thought her. Today many people from many charities eulogised about the good work she'd done, and reapeated snippets of the Panorama interview threatened to undo their eulogies. It's no good, I can't pretend that I feel any more grief at her death than I would at the death of anybody, so I won't be going on a pilgrimage to Buckingham Palace with flowers and a card.

In fact, if anything I feel less grief because Diana was such an unreal figure; a character in a soap opera. Part of my mind keeps wondering what the actress has done to get herself written out, and expecting her to crop up heading her own sitcom or police series in a couple of months. This is ridiculous of course, and a little horrifying. She was a real person, and she died tragically last night after being chased like a fox by a pack of hounds with cameras.

The responsibility for her death filtered steadily upwards yesterday. If anyone ever blamed her driver for driving at upwards of 80mph aling the banks of the Seine (and I don't think they did), they'd stopped by eight o'clock. The paparazzi who chased her were the first to be blamed - and certainly the French Police agreed, arresting seven of them. But several people then pointed out that the paparazzi were only obeying orders, and that if newspaper editors didn't pay vast sums of money for the photos they took, they wouldn't do it. Newspaper proprietors were similarly accused, for pushing their editors to publish these photographs to boost circulation. Finally it was realised that circulation wouldn't actually be boosted if the puplic didn't buy the papers, and the public was ultimately responsible for creating a demand.

In my view this rests on a double fallacy. Firstly, it assumes that you can assign an ultimate responsibility, when in fact the resposibility can and should be shared.

Secondly it assumed that if someone can show that they had a reason to do something, they cannot be held responsible for the consequences. This is idiocy. Is it an excuse for the camera-wielding hell's angels who persued the car through Paris that they'd get a good price for the photos? Is it an excuse for the editors that publishing the photos would increase their circulation? What excuse does the public have - that the editors shouldn't print the photos and tempt them into buying the papers? Or is that that by the time it gets to the level of the public, the chain of responsibility is so long that it doesn't really exist at all? That it's absurd to suggest there's any real link between someone buying a copy of the Sunday Mirror and the death of Diana in Paris?

Well, there's an interesting way to test this. Already, pictures of Diana dying in her car are being hawked around the world's press. So far, the world's press has huffed and puffed and refused to buy the pictures. I doubt they'll be hidden for ever, though. At some point, someone will buy them, or they'll find their way onto the Internet - they're possibly already there. How popular will they be? Very, is my guess, and if you can't believe that, consider how often the footage of the death of JFK is shown.