Shropshire bodyguard Trevor Rees today revealed he had needed more security staff to protect Diana, Princess of Wales and her boyfriend on the night they died.

Today at London’s High Court, Mr Rees, sole survivor of the car crash in a Parisian underpass in August 1997, said he felt they had needed double the number of bodyguards allocated for the trip.

Mr Rees, from Oswestry, told Richard Horwell QC, representing the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, the intensity of the increasing media attention had forced him to ask for more help in protecting Diana and Dodi al Fayed. Kez Wingfield, Mr Rees’s colleague, said Mr Rees’s calls had fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Rees told the jury “at that stage it was in the open, in the media, and the attention, both paparazzi and general public, would have been a lot higher”.

“I think it would have been good to have a four-man team,” he said.

Mr Rees rejected yesterday’s claims from Mr Michael Mansfield QC, lawyer for Mohammed ay Fayed, Dodi’s father, he had failed in his duty. He said when Dodi told both bodyguards to leave the foyer outside the Imperial Suite of the Ritz Hotel, it was considered “a reasonably secure area”.

Mr Rees also told the jury he had seen flashes from photographers as they made the final journey from the Paris hotel.

The former bodyguard, from Oswestry, said a recent Sunday newspaper article where friends claimed his memories were gradually returning were untrue and he had not spoken about the crash.