Читать книгу Mr Paparazzi - Darryn Lyons - Страница 5

IT WAS JUST PAST MIDNIGHT on Sunday 31 August and I was at home watching television when the phone rang. It was my agent in Paris and he had shocking news. He told me that Princess Diana had been in a major car accident, he had men at the scene and the pictures would be with me soon.

My agent’s photographers had lost the trail of Diana’s car when its driver, Henri Paul, jumped a red light immediately after leaving the Ritz hotel in Paris. While most of the other paparazzi kept trying to find the car, our men decided to head for home and happened upon the wreck of the car as it lay in the Alma tunnel. They ran down and began helping administer first aid to Diana as they waited for emergency services to arrive. Once it became clear they could do nothing more to assist, Fabrice clicked into work mode and took some pictures of the biggest new story he would ever be a part of.

I rang a few newspaper editors and offered them the tip of the year for a healthy fee. They reacted to the news with incredulity, but started chasing it up while I raced into the office. The pictures from the accident started dropping onto our computer system and I realised it was serious. I whispered a prayer. I didn’t know what to do. I knew this was big, but the little boy from Geelong didn’t know how big.

Initial reports said that Diana was concussed and had a broken arm and the images I was looking at seemed to confirm that. I spoke to the editor of the News of the World, who offered me a quarter of a million pounds for one-time use of the images. We did the deal, and a low-res shot was sent to News International – the only one that left my office.

And then I got a call telling me that Diana was dead. I immediately withdrew all of the images from the market. It was a big call, but once the tragic news came, my mind was set. I just had to answer a simple ethical question. I felt a wave of shock. Truly this, too, was like losing a member of the family. I was gripped by a deep feeling of sickness and felt like my soul had been pierced. Something had gone terribly wrong. Fairytale princesses weren’t supposed to die.