Princess Diana never wanted to divorce Prince Charles, claimed her spiritual healer and friend Simone Simmons.
The princess was "blubbering" to her friend on the phone, saying she loved Charles all along, and didn't want to stop being his wife, said Simmons.
The 62-year-old also said Diana deeply regretted the 1995 BBC interview with journalist Martin Bashir.
She said: “The day afterwards? Yes. Then when the Queen wrote to her, and demanded they get a divorce, she was blubbering on the phone, and I went over to calm her down. She said, ‘Simone, I never wanted to divorce Charles. I always loved him.'"
Simmons said she told the Princess she should never had done the interview, and claimed Fergie and comedian Ruby Wax had encouraged her.
In an interview with the Evening Standard last year, Wax - who befriended Diana after they met at a charity gala in 1993 - said she doesn't recall it and that she didn't know who Bashir was at the time, though added: "But I don’t have a great memory." She described the interview as "nauseating" and said she thought at the time he was doing it for "his own celebrity".
Simmons told The Telegraph she and Diana were best friends: "Yes, I'm a very odd person for some people to think of as Diana's best friend. But at least I'm honest, I'm sincere, and I would never put her wrong. I was very privileged to have such an amazing best friend."
Simmons, the daughter of an East End clothing manufacturer, met the princess at the end of 1993 at the Hale Clinic, an upmarket alternative health centre near Regent's Park where Diana was a regular. They became friends and the two would apparently spend hours on the phone, with Simmons counselling her following her divorce with Charles.
She claimed Bashir manipulated the princess into opening up in the Panorama interview, where she famously claimed there were three people in hers and Charles' marriage.
When Simmons and Diana spoke on the phone the next day, Diana asked Simmons what she thought of the interview and Simmons said: "Oh God, you made a real prat out of yourself. But not only that. What about the children?" Diana replied "I didn't think", started crying and asked Simmons to come over.
Simmons described Diana as naïve and not emotionally developed, but someone with a huge heart who wanted to heal and unite the world. She also remembered her cheeky sense of humour.
She recalled a time where Diana tried to steal Princess Michael of Kent's Burmese cat for Simmons, who loves cats, and how the pair had donned avocado face masks and looked out of the window at Kensington Palace and found Princess Michael of Kent staring back up at them looking bemused.
Simmons also said Diana was "smitten" with heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Kahn after meeting him at the Royal Brompton Hospital in 1995. The pair embarked on a relationship, with Diana visiting Khan in his native Pakistan on a number of occasions, but allegedly his family did not want the doctor to marry a non-Muslim woman.
Simmons said the princess was devastated when the relationship ended in 1997 and claimed she only got with Dodi Fayed to make Dr Kahn jealous.
She believes Diana would be “so upset” about her sons' fallout and said the princess told them to make sure they were always the best of friends.
