Driver 'had high alcohol tolerance'

Claude Garrec said Henri Paul had a "very high" tolerance to alcohol, preferring sprits to wine.

Mr Garrec, who comes from the same town in Brittany as Mr Paul and had known him since they were teenagers, added that he believed his friend would have driven after consuming alcohol if asked to by Dodi Fayed to whom he was extremely loyal.

He also dismissed suggestions that the Ritz Hotel's acting security chief had been in the pay of security services although he confirmed he did have some contact with them through his work at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

Giving evidence to Diana and Dodi's London inquest by video link from the French capital, Mr Garrec described his friend as an "extrovert" and "sentimental" but someone who still had "secrets". And he gave details of a man with a full social life whose passion was flying light aircraft in his spare time.

He told how he played tennis with Mr Paul on the morning before the crash when he had mentioned that he was due to pick up Diana and Dodi at the le Bourget airport a few hours later.

Mr Paul, who was not a chauffeur, was driving the Mercedes which crashed in the Alma Tunnel in Paris in the early hours of August 31 1997 killing himself, Dodi Fayed and the Princess, on their way back to Mr Fayed's flat from the Ritz.

Blood tests after his death indicated that Mr Paul was around three times the French drink-drive limit.

A receipt from the bar at the Ritz Hotel in Paris also suggests he drank two double-sized measures of Ricard aniseed spirit - in total stronger than four UK shots of whisky - the jury have been told.

But Dodi's father Mohamed al Fayed believes the results were faked to cover up a murder plot orchestrated by the Duke of Edinburgh. He claims Henri Paul, his employee of more than 10 years, was secretly in the pay of the security services.