Wednesday 22 August 2007 9:00pm - 10:00pm

Almost a decade ago Princess Diana was killed in a car crash while being pursued through the streets of Paris by paparazzi photographers.

A week before the ten year anniversary of her death, Diana’s Last Summer tells the definitive story of the princesses’ love hate relationship with the photographers who followed her every move, right up to the deadly game of cat and mouse which ended in a Paris tunnel.

Using testimony from photographers and pictures taken by some of the cameramen who shadowed her on that fateful day, the documentary explores the tragic final act in a drama that had begun seven weeks earlier on the French Riviera.

When Diana and her sons arrived in the south of France as guests of Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed it was intended as a private family holiday, but it turned into a media circus. Al Fayed pushed the boat out – literally, entertaining Diana and the princes on a multi million pound yacht.

The temptation to snap Diana frolicking in the sun was great and the British press descended en mass, hiring speed boats and even helicopters to pursue the princess.

“You spend a lot of money and quite often you won’t come back with a sausage. This time we came back with several Harrods hampers,” says picture agency boss Darryn Lyons.

The chase was on and photographers who haunt the bars and the beaches of San Tropez were desperate to fill their boots.

The heat was turned up further when it emerged that Diana was romantically involved with Al Fayed’s son Dodi.

“That put the premium up on a picture of Diana and Dodi together absolutely into stratosphere level and if you could get her in a bikini, and if possible, the two kissing, that was going to be worth a lot of money,” says Royal reporter James Whitaker.

It was an Italian photographer called Mario Brenna who got the golden shot. Acting on a tip off he captured the couple in a clinch and netted himself a cool £3 million by selling it around the world.

More photographers from Europe descended on the Med to cash in on the biggest game of kiss chase in tabloid history.

Diana appeared to be in control but that would all end on the streets of Paris, the city of love, home to the famous tower and the most determined paparazzi in the world.

Diana would be meeting with Dodi in the French capital and the local press were determined to get some sensational shots.

“What Diana didn’t realize is that once you give all those great pictures, it’s very hard to say, ‘hold on a minute, guys – stop!’” says Darryn Lyons.

Diana’s former aide Patrick Jephson reflects on the determination of Diana’s Parisian pursuers: “The Paris paparazzi were a well-known phenomenon. They were a kind of circus. They would chase the royal motorcade on motorcycles, they had pillion passengers carrying heavy television cameras…it all contributed to the sense of being inside a Wild West stagecoach while bandits were attacking it.”

French snapper Pierre Suu says the photographers had a clear idea of what they were after: “The ultimate set would be them going into a Jeweller’s and buying a ring - that would have been a great set of pictures.”

After abandoning evening plans to go to dinner, Diana and Dodi returned to the Ritz. In a bid to escape the waiting photographers they fled the hotel via the back door – a fateful plan that would lead to their deaths.

Pursued by photographers, they crashed in the Pont d’Alma tunnel, sending shockwaves around the world.

The fallout from the crash was intense. Despite the police confiscating photographers’ cameras at the scene, not all pictures taken in the tunnel were caught in the sweep and were being offered to eager picture editors.

When it emerged that Diana had died, the newsmen were quick to scrap their plans to buy them in for the next day’s papers.

French paparazzo Pierre Suu recalls: “The very courageous editors worldwide, these very respectable men in very expensive suits and chauffeurs were so keen to get these pictures first but as soon as the news arrived that the princess had died, ‘oh no, no, no, no, we don’t buy this anymore, please erase all emails, and whatever conversation. I have nothing to do with that, I was at home sleeping. Thank you very much.’”

After so many years in the spotlight Diana had finally given a picture that couldn’t be published.

Former News of the World editor Phil Hall reflects: “I felt huge responsibility for what happened and I think everyone in the media did. It’s difficult because we knew the full story, we knew that Diana was helping newspapers and yeah the driver was drunk but my view is that if the paparazzi hadn’t been following her the car wouldn’t have been speeding and, you know, the accident may never have happened.”

Interviews with paparazzi, her former security chief Ken Wharfe and newsmen who had followed her life all feature in the film, but it’s the photos that really tell the Diana story.

Diana was the most photographed woman in history; our obsession with her foreshadowed the celebrity culture of today, but the rules as we know them now hadn’t been drawn up.

Every picture of her seems to tell a story and her final moments were like any others in her complex life – they were caught on camera.