Advance sales of Elton John's rewritten song in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, Candle in the Wind 1997, are expected to reach eight million worldwide. Record stores in Paris, where the CD went on sale yesterday, restricted shoppers to buying two copies each.
Estimates of the total sales of the single, which features the princess's favourite white rose on the cover, are as high as 13 million. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund is likely to receive £10 million in proceeds.
The CD was released in Paris first before today's global launch because it was manufactured in Normandy, a spokeswoman for Virgin Records said. By late yesterday afternoon Virgin Megastore in Paris was running out of copies and an additional 6,000 had been ordered to meet demand.
Meanwhile, as letters, poems and cards continued to pour in to St James's Palace in London, a spokeswoman for the Prince of Wales and his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, said they wished to say a "sincere thank you" to the public following the princess's death. Although thousands of letters were still arriving, the spokeswoman gave an assurance that everyone who had taken the time to write would receive a reply from the palace.
For two Slovakian tourists who were given 28-day prison sentences on Thursday for removing teddy bears from the gates of Westminster Abbey, British justice relented. An appeal judge at Southwark Crown Court yesterday accepted the explanation of the two women that they had taken the teddy bears because they thought they would be destroyed after the princess's funeral. The court fined them £200 instead.
A French newspaper report claimed that the British bodyguard who was seriously injured in the car crash which killed Princess Diana and her friend Mr Dodi Fayed, might be suffering from amnesia and might never be able to remember the full details.
Mr Trevor Rees-Jones, who was sitting in the front seat of the car when it crashed, is understood to be making a slow but steady recovery in a Paris hospital. However, Le Figaro reported yesterday that the combination of shock and the high doses of anaesthetic with which Mr Rees-Jones is being treated might have caused total or partial amnesia.
Quoting a medical source at the hospital, Le Figaro implied that even if he recovered sufficiently to give evidence to the French prosecutors investigating the car crash, his recollections might not be reliable. The source said: "If he remembers something, his testimony will be subject to caution. It will not be 100 per cent reliable and will therefore be subject to interpretation by the various parties."
Following the publication of the report a spokesman for the hospital refused to confirm or deny its accuracy. But the spokesman was able to shed some light on the extent of Mr Rees-Jones's recovery when he confirmed that he was slowly regaining consciousness.
However, it is not known how long Mr Rees-Jones will remain in hospital or indeed if he will be able to communicate following extensive surgery to rebuild his mouth and jaw last week.
PA adds: The former teen supergroup Take That plans to reunite for a special performance in memory of Diana to be held some time in December.