Remember Princess Diana? What On Earth For?

This sums up my thoughts nicely on the overwrought Diana memorials:

The official commemoration ceremony of the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death is at least something unique in Britain's long and colorful history.

Sir Winston Churchill was not considered worthy of such a ritual a decade on from his death, nor were Nelson, Wellington, Pitt, Newton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Kipling, Scott, Queen Victoria, Shackleton or any of the heroes that British colleges or battleships used to be named after.

Of course, unlike Princess Diana, none of them had committed treason, in the full, technical, legal sense of the term, nor died during, and as a result of, what Geoffrey Wheatcroft described (very bravely at the time) as "a liaison with a coke-snorting, starlet-bonking playboy."

She wasn't "the People's Princess". She was an overexposed, daffy little tart who singlehandedly destroyed British respect for their most hallowed traditions. She was Paris Hilton with good press.

If you want to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of someone's death this week, why not choose Mother Theresa instead? Now THERE was a woman worth emulating.