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Wednesday, 6 November, 2002, 06:59 GMT

Burrell story fills papers

The Daily Mirror carries the first reports of its interview with Princess Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell.

It focuses on the subject matter of his three-hour meeting with the Queen, shortly after the death of the Princess, which ultimately led to the collapse of his trial for theft.

Mr Burrell says the Queen told him to be vigilant, saying "there are powers at work in this country about which he have no knowledge".

He also explains that he failed to tell his defence team about the details of the meeting out of loyalty to the Queen.

'True coincidence'

"In the Royal household," he says, "it is unthinkable to recount any conversation with Her Majesty".

The Daily Telegraph has an interview with Mr Burrell's barrister, Lord Carlile.

He says it was a "true coincidence" that the prosecution and the defence heard for the first time last week about the meeting.

The Sun, which lost out in the bidding war for Mr Burrell's story, is running a spoiler. The paper questions the state of his relationship with the princess.

It would have had even more, had Paul Burrell not been granted an injunction preventing the paper publishing parts of the statement he made to the police.

Under the headline "Blabbermouth gags us", the Sun's legal team vows to fight the injunction in court. The Daily Mail brands Mr Burrell an outcast, because of growing anger among Diana's family and friends at his decision to sell his story.

Taking up virtually the rest of the column inches in the papers is the speculation over the future of Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.

Most of the broadsheets believe that he only has himself to blame for the problems.

The front page of the Independent says he is "fighting for his survival", after telling his party it must unite, or die.

Digging a hole

The Guardian's main headline says Mr Duncan Smith's gamble flopped, while the Times says he stumbled over the traitors.

The paper takes its cue from bonfire night as it describes his predicament as "Gunpowder, treason, and a guy losing the plot".

The inside pages do not make any better reading for Mr Duncan Smith.

In its leader, the Times says he needs to stop digging, because he is making the hole he is in deeper still.

The paper calls him the "should-have-stayed-quiet" man, whose best and only hope is to stop talking about leadership and concentrate on policy and strategy instead.

The Independent says that the mood among Tory MPs is black - for many it is worse than the last days of Margaret Thatcher.

But it is the analysis of the Daily Telegraph which Mr Duncan Smith may find most chilling: in its leader, the paper declares that "yesterday was the most desperate day in the history of the Conservative Party".

The issue of adoption by unmarried couples, which sparked the latest war in the Tory party, is widely covered.

Compensation

In the Independent, David Aaronovitch points out that under the old rules, children would apparently have been better off being given to Peter and Sonia Sutcliffe, the Shipmans, or the Crippins than himself and his girlfriend.

The Daily Mail describes the Lords decision to back the government's plans to allow unmarried couples to adopt as "a sensational U-turn".

The Daily Express and the Daily Star are among the papers which report that the convicted criminal who won almost £10m on the national lottery could be facing compensation claims from some of his victims.

The Star calls Michael Carroll's win "galling" and urges Tony Blair to "find a way to swing the odds in favour of decent law abiding folk".

But the Times says there is an ideological reason to celebrate his good fortune.

Posh fight

The paper says Carroll's win should be seen as a piece of social experimentation.

His future behaviour, it argues, could settle the argument between the conservative view that puts criminal behaviour down to defective character, and the liberal stance that blames delinquency on circumstances.

A legal battle over the right to be called Posh between Victoria Beckham, formerly Posh Spice and Peterborough United, has caught the imagination of many papers.

The football club wants to register its nickname, Posh, as a trademark, but pop star Posh has raised objection.

The Times says the club is more used to scraps with the likes of Wigan Athletic.

The Telegraph says Peterborough's flamboyant manager, Barry Fry, reputedly offered to sell Mrs Beckham his personalised POSH car number plate some years ago.

She apparently turned it down, saying she wanted to concentrate on her solo career and avoid connections with the Spice Girls.

The Financial Times thinks the dispute may be resolved if the two poshes agree to use the name only in specific areas.

It quotes an expert who says "Peterborough is a football club and she's a singer... there's no real crossover".


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