Previously best known for jailing disgraced former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken for perjury in 1999, he kept a watchful eye over the controversial High Court proceedings, unafraid to challenge witnesses' accounts – or indeed anyone else.

It allowed barristers to delve into details far beyond the scope of a normal inquest but it was he who finally pulled the plug on the key conspiracy theories, ruling that there was "not a shred of evidence".

However he was also eager to avoid any accusation of cover-up.

When former royal butler Paul Burrell later admitted he had not told the whole truth in his evidence, the coroner had no hesitation in demanding his recall.


The tycoon

The driving force behind what could prove the most expensive inquest in legal history, Mohamed al Fayed has been a regular sight in Court 73.

He was often to be seen greeting starstruck members of the public in the High Court's main hall while waiting for the rest of his entourage.

On his day in court he suggested the Duke of Edinburgh was a "Nazi", branded the Duchess of Cornwall a "crocodile", called the royals "this Dracula family" and denounced Tony Blair, Scotland Yard and the CIA.

Mr al Fayed's position has been consistent throughout – that of a grieving father.

But few other grieving fathers have the resources Mr al Fayed has.

He was effectively paying for three separate legal teams each led by eminent QCs.


The "rock"

The appearance of Diana's tanned and portly former butler, Paul Burrell, will be remembered for the coroner's subsequent conclusion that he was a "liar" and the moment he was mocked by Richard Keen QC as a "porous rock".

A mysterious "secret", referred to in a letter from Diana, left him most exposed.

After being forced to travel almost 400 miles to retrieve the original, only to return without it, he remembered that the "secret" had simply been Diana's plans to move to the US or South Africa.

The baffled coroner observed that this was not in fact one secret, but two, before adding: "It doesn't seem to me that they are actually secrets at all."

But his real troubles began a few weeks later when he claimed in a conversation, which unknown to him was being recorded, that he had withheld information from the jury. He refused to return to explain himself.


The lawyers

Dubbed "Mr Moneybags", Mohamed al Fayed's counsel, Michael Mansfield, is one of Britain's most famous lawyers but even he finally abandoned his client's conspiracy theories.

He was relentless in his grillings of witnesses, but the revelations he extracted did not always have much to do with the mechanics of an accident.

Perhaps his most dramatic exchange was with former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Condon, whom he accused of complicity in a criminal conspiracy, a claim dismissed as "abhorrent".

One unexpected star was Scotland Yard's barrister, Richard Horwell QC.

He raised laughter when he asked: "Can you help as to why the might and power of the Royal Family, the British Government and MI6 could only afford a Fiat Uno...?"


The "superfan"

A more regular fixture at the inquests than Mohamed al Fayed himself, Diana "superfan" John Loughrey, 53, has never missed a day.

With the words "Diana" and "Dodi" painted on his face in 3in royal blue letters he has been getting up at 5am each day for the past six months to get to central London from his home in Enfield, north London, to be first in the queue. But then he had little competition.

Building a complete collection of free public gallery tickets he has managed to have almost all of them autographed by witnesses. Out of more than 90 tickets he had at least 80 signed. He plans to sell his collection for charity.

All the security men at the Royal Courts of Justice know his name. Even the coroner noted only he, the jury and "the gentleman in the public gallery with Diana and Dodi painted on his forehead" had sat through all the evidence.