London: Princess Diana's lover Hasnat Khan yesterday revealed for the first time the intimate details of their two-year romance.
The heart surgeon broke a decade of silence to tell the inquest into her death how they had enjoyed "a normal sexual relationship".
He also dismissed the long-held belief that he had broken off the relationship, saying the Princess told him it was over in two meetings in the summer of 1997 - but she denied anyone else was involved.
Khan said he did not know she had started an affair with Dodi Fayed until he heard it on the news. Diana and Dodi were killed in a Paris car crash in August 1997. In a written statement to the inquest, Khan, who now lives in Pakistan, told how they met when Diana watched two heart operations at the Brompton Hospital where he was a cardiac registrar. The Princess later told friends that Khan was "the love of her life". Khan, 48, who had refused to give direct evidence via video-link, said they would meet at Kensington Palace or at his home - the only places where the media "could not get to us". Khan said they had a "normal sexual relationship", adding: "I have no reason to believe she was unfaithful to me."
He said that in one of their attempts to avoid detection, Diana wore a black wig on a visit to Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho.
Khan recalled how he and Diana once went to a pub and she asked if she could order the drinks because she had never done so before.
Flirtatious
She enjoyed the experience and chatted to the barman. He said that Diana was "down to earth and made everyone feel at ease", adding: "She was also very flirtatious with everyone".
She introduced him to William and Harry because she wanted them to know what was going on in her life. His main concern was that "my life would become hell because of who she was". In the end, he told her he did not want that sort of lifestyle. He said the only way they could live anything near a normal life would be to move to Pakistan, where Diana went and talked to her friend Jemima Khan - then married to cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.
"Later I got the impression she did not consider living there a possibility," said Khan. Khan said he learned, after the event, that around the end of 1996 or early 1997, Diana asked royal butler Paul Burrell to talk to a priest about the feasibility of them getting married in secret.
"I thought it was a ridiculous idea," Khan said. "She just said everything would be all right. That was her answer to everything - it will turn out all right."
Khan said that, if they had got married, as far as he was concerned she would not have had to convert to Islam. She never said she would do so. His only concern would have been if they had had a child. It would have been difficult to decide which religion to bring the child up in.
Khan said Diana was concerned about her personal safety, but "not paranoid" about it. She told him she had changed her car because the brakes of her Audi had been tampered with.
Murdered
She also believed one of her protection officers had been murdered and that her phone lines were being monitored. But he never heard anything to suggest she was mentally unstable.
Khan said that, because of his relationship with Diana, he received anonymous threatening letters containing cut-out pictures of him with a noose around his neck. He destroyed that material. As far as he knew, the only person who would have objected to him marrying Diana would have been her mother, Frances Shand Kydd.
