A VERY surprising answer for Lady Diana when she asked one girl to be her bridesmaid

• Diana bridesmaid Sarah Jane Gaselee will go on TV to sell her luxury apartment
• Her father trained the Queen Mother’s horses and taught Prince Charles to ride
• For all the latest Royal news, pictures and videos click here

One of Princess Diana’s bridesmaids is to make a television appearance in an attempt to sell her luxury family home after the collapse of her relationship.

When Sarah Jane Gaselee bought two neighbouring flats in London’s Knightsbridge nine years ago, she and her property developer partner Paul Andrews spent a year turning it into a £5.25 million family home.

The couple knocked the two flats, which cost £3 million and £850,000 in 2014, into one four-bedroom apartment, digging down to make higher ceilings and creating a steam and laundry room.

But Covid made it hard to sell when the relationship fell apart, and now Sarah Jane is appearing on the Channel 4 show Britain’s Most Expensive Houses – and giving viewers a rare insight into her life in the process. 

Sarah Jane, who has two children, Ashley, 17, and Ruby, 15, has spent six months and £120,000 converting the property back into adjoining flats, which are connected by a secret door, in a bid to hasten a sale.

The larger three-bedroom apartment has been sold by Sotheby’s International Realty for just under £3.85 million, earning the couple a profit of around £700,000, while the smaller two-bedroom flat, valued at £1.7 million has been rented out.

‘We’re selling it now because it’s time to move onto the next project and it’s too big for us when we’re three or even four,’ said Sarah, who works for the buying agency Property Select UK, doing introductions and viewings for high net-worth people.

‘We want to get something a little more permanent maybe not in the middle of Knightsbridge. We could have done much better with it had we not had Covid and all these things.’

It is now 42 years since Sarah Jane, then 11, was chosen to be one of Princess Diana’s five bridesmaids – her father Nick Gaselee was a racehorse trainer who once rode for the Queen Mother and taught Prince Charles to ride.

He introduced her to Princess Diana and they corresponded when Sarah-Jane went to the boarding school Southover, in Lewes, East Sussex. ‘I absolutely hated it,’ she once said.

‘I’d creep into the phone box and call Diana and tell her how utterly miserable I was and she was so sympathetic. I missed a lot of my education because it was so horrendous. Diana kept me going. She was always so sweet and kind.’

Diana asked Sarah Jane to be a bridesmaid when they were walking a racecourse together. ‘Diana was racing round with me on her back and she said: “Would you like to be my bridesmaid?” I said: “Will I be on television?” And she fell about laughing.

‘The Diana I remember was bright and sweet and funny. But her life got more and more difficult. I wrote to her after Andrew Morton’s book was published to say how sorry I was about everything she’d been through.

‘She wrote such a lovely letter back. She said: I understand the pain and suffering of people all over the world.” I’ll always remember that.’

Sarah Jane was a guest at both Diana’s funeral and memorial service held to mark the anniversary of Diana’s death. ‘I went to her funeral but I wasn’t sitting with the other bridesmaids so I don’t know who went to that,’ she recalled.

‘But ten years after Diana died, her boys had a memorial for her and all the bridesmaids and pages were sat together so that was sweet.’ 

• Britain’s Most Expensive Houses is on Channel 4 at 9pm on June 22