Where were you when you heard princess Diana had died?

I remember seeing her picture on television before the National Anthem was played and broadcasting on RTE ended for the night.

I was on the phone to Eircell customer care complaining about the regular interference and lack of privacy of the calls on their network, when I heard the sad sad news,

I was up at 4am getting ready for work in the food fair restaurant in Dublin airport when I turned on Sky news. I was very shocked even though I didnt really know much of her at the time. There was a real sense of this being a big tragedy and I dont recall there being a death of a famous person that was as significant since then.

Like most, back then I was sleeping in my rented house.

Unlike most now, you could actually rent a house.

I had just got off a flight to Mozambique in Venice Marco Polo Airport as I was about to board another flight to Sydney, when all off a sudden I woke up on a futon in me Dad's gaff and seen it on Sky News that I'd fallin asleep watching on an old portable.

I'm pretty sure that the only reason I remember is because I was with a friend in Havana in the hotel room drinking rum, smoking cigars and joints and watching TV.

Was at home, was back to school, 6th year the Monday, so annoyed by default.
I remember thinking she was 36, and that seemed quite old to me then being 16.

I'm 36 now myself and she was still a very young woman. I guess she was so much in the public eye in those days that she seemed much older than she was. 2 other people had died, the bodyguard was in a critical condition, you'd swear it was just her who had been killed. I remember that annoying me, sort of like you only get attention if you happen to be famous. That's just the way things are.

I think the media coverage, in the aftermath and during her funeral definitely zeroed in on the cringe inducing grief merchants which gave the viewer the impression that the whole nation was in mourning. They weren't. Most people just felt sad about a horrible tragedy and felt sad for the two Princes who had lost their mother in quite ****ty circumstances.

I was a kid watching the news on tv. Told my mum that some princess had died and they were making a big deal of it on the tv.
Mum started crying. I couldn't and still cant understand why anyone has any emotional attachment to a princess in the UK.

20 years later people are still going mental over her.

Its now the twentieth anniversary but even over the last 8 years ive lived in the UK she turns up in magazines or papers literally every week.

U2 concert in the old Lansdowne Road.

NIMAN wrote: »

U2 concert in the old Lansdowne Road.

Popmart. I was at that as well. Great concert. Back when U2 were at their peak.

I was in a taxi on my way home from town, I didn't hear the news till about 3 in the morning.

I have to say I didn't really get the grief over her death at the time, or the appeal of the woman while she was alive at all.

It's sad when any young woman dies in an accident, but that's about it - it was no more or less sad than anyone else. I think since her death she's been elevated to some saint like status that just doesn't match the basically parasitic life she lived.

By the time she died, she apparently hadn't seen her kids for something like a month while she swanned around the world with her super rich boyfriend. Doesn't sound too saintly to me?

Sunday morning. I was in bed and woke to hear my grandparents talking about it. My grandfather was an old fashioned Republican, hated everything British. He liked Diana because she got away from the royal family. Both of them seemed genuinely upset by it.