LONDON - The usual image of a butler is of a taciturn gent who irons the Sunday newspaper, serves up the sherry and otherwise keeps up with family goings-on with an eye firmly glued to the keyhole. And there's the odd one into whose ear a queen whispers dire warnings of dark forces abroad in the land.

But then, Paul Burrell is not your run-of-the-mill Jeeves. In addition to serving up one lump or two at afternoon tea, his duties as butler to Princess Diana ranged from smuggling her lovers into the palace in the trunk of his car to helping her hand out the equivalent of $75 at a time to railway station prostitutes.

Meanwhile, between these little chores and even after Diana got herself killed in a high-speed car crash in Paris, Mr. Burrell was helping himself to bits and pieces of her goodies at Kensington Palace - a dress here, a hat there, some monogrammed pajamas, a few score letters and compact discs, bits of crockery, the occasional living room table.

When he went on trial in London on charges of stealing more than 300 of her possessions, the ex-butler insisted the princess had given several to him, others he kept for "safekeeping" in her memory, still others he rescued from a bonfire started by Diana's husband, Prince Charles, including a table given to them by natives on a South Pacific island.

So close were he and the princess, says Mr. Burrell, that she referred to him constantly as "my rock." To this day, he wears that sobriquet like a medal of honor, even though she also called her bodyguard and her chauffeur and her secretary and possibly a few startled passers-by "my rock." Princess Diana's collection of rocks rivaled a gravel pit.

Whatever, her rock got off when Queen Elizabeth II suddenly recalled that five years or so ago, Mr. Burrell muttered something to her about retaining some of the now-late princess' letters. (One was a note from Diana to her son, Prince William, addressing him as "my darling wombat" - possibly the reason William prayed fervently that the case would never come to trial.)

That rather messed up the crown prosecution's case, relying as it did on theft rather than storing things in drawers for safekeeping. Mr. Burrell thanked the queen for saving him from the slammer, vowed he had no intention of profiting from the whole business and promptly sold his story to a London newspaper for the better part of $500,000.

Now the saga of what the butler saw, or heard, becomes curiouser and curiouser, to borrow appropriately from Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Burrell recalls a three-hour private audience he had with the queen, during which she whispered to him, "Be careful, Paul. ... There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge."

No one doubts there are dark forces afoot in Britain - the ones who put wet leaves on rail lines to stop trains in their tracks, put up road work signs without a workman in sight for miles and persuade monarchs to give three-hour audiences to flaky butlers. The queen didn't elaborate.

What has raised more than a few eyebrows is the time the queen and Mr. Burrell spent together. Even the prime minister, carrying the burden of whether to bomb Iraq or perhaps change baby Leo's diaper, warrants barely an hour of the queen's time, slotted in somewhere between her knighting another over-the-hill rock star or walking the corgis.

Meanwhile, reputations are taking a pounding. Prince William calls Mr. Burrell "Paul the Betrayer" for cashing in on the whole affair (and Will hasn't forgotten that "wombat" business). Mr. Burrell calls Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, a "hypocrite" for shunning her in life but capitalizing on her death. Lord Spencer calls the butler despicable.

Actually, none of it would matter were it not for the central character in the piece - Princess Diana, whether alive or dead. There's a BBC survey currently under way that asks folks across the land to choose the greatest Briton of all time, or at least the last 1,000 years of it.

Diana - trunks full of lovers and cash for the prostitutes down at Paddington Station and nasty divorce and all - was in first place. But now that Mr. Burrell has gone public with all the naughty bits, she has slipped to second, marginally behind Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer who gave the Industrial Revolution its kick-start.

But she's still ahead of Winston Churchill, the chap who won a world war. Some leagues behind are Sir Isaac Newton, King Henry VIII and William Shakespeare.

Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

Al Webb is a journalist and free-lance writer who lives in London.