It was also a life. At least 90 per cent of Saunders's waking hours were occupied by Diana waiting for her, stalking her, chasing her and then, in paparazzi slang for taking photographs, ``whacking'' her, ``blitzing'' her, ``hosing her down''. He did this for years, and he enjoyed it.

He also earned a great deal of money. ``We were a bunch of lads. We had a sixth-form mentality and in lots of ways we couldn't believe our luck.'' Then Diana died, and immediately, Saunders's book, Dicing With Di, co-written with fellow snapper Glenn Harvey, was withdrawn from the shops by its publisher. Peppered with disrespectful references to ``That Woman'' and the ``loon'', andlurid detail about how Saunders and Harvey would track Diana ``like big game hunters'', it was too close to Charles Spencer's funeral oration for comfort. Saunders began to see that life was going to be tough. He was busy for a while, giving television interviews about what it was like to stake out Diana. As a teenager, inspired by All the President's Men, Saunders had wanted to be a political journalist. That was still his aim when he joined the Slough Express as a reporter straight out of school. Only somewhere along the way, he got lost. He decided last spring to go back to local journalism, ``to start again at the bottom''. It didn't work. ``You can't go from the front page of Newsweek to a local rag. I suppose I was trying to find my roots or something, but I should have known better.''

Since then, Saunders has drifted into what he calls photojournalism. What he really does is chase around America after celebrity gossip stories for the TV networks and magazines.

His beat isfilm-star haunts in Florida, LA, the West Indies. He's 34 and unmarried. He misses the Diana trail -- not so much the thrill of the chase as the closeness to other men, the friendship.

Doesn't he feel guilty, thinking back? He made her life hell, she told him so, many times. ``No, no,'' he says. ``You've got to understand. She used us as much as we used her. If there was a good picture of Camilla Parker-Bowles in the paper that day, then Di would be out early, ready to be photographed. Some days she smiled and talked, some days she argued. It depended on her mood.''

No one has emerged yet, in paparazzo terms, to take Diana's place, but Saunders reckons it's only a matter of time.

``The whole circus will start again with William. I got a great picture of him rowing on the Thames the other week and sold it all over the world. They were mad for it, but no editor in this country would touch it. That won't last. You wait until he gets his first girlfriend.''