Only His Butler Knows for Sure

The butler did it. He was the one who found the evidence to hush up all you irritating unromantics. You think normal people don’t really find true love in six easy weeks or less? Well, who said Diana and Dodi were normal people?

So count the carats. We dare you. Exhibit A is the humongous ring above this column, featuring an enormous diamond, to use the technical term, surrounded by a jillion pave stones, set on a yellow-and-white gold band. It cost more than $200,000, it boasts the chic lineage of Parisian jeweler Alberto Repossi, and it nearly blinded butler Rene Delorm when he first saw it.

The setting was the Paris apartment of Delorm’s late boss, Mr. Dodi Fayed (Delorm was the only person in Dodi’s universe who always called him Mr. Fayed; everyone else just called him Dodi). Mr. Fayed stood in the door to the kitchen and clicked open the pale gray velvet box.

“Rene, make sure we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner,” he told Delorm. “I’m going to propose to her tonight.” The Harrod’s heir and the Princess of Wales died in a car crash that night, Aug. 31.

We are chatting with Delorm at the end of a bowling-alley-size conference table in the Santa Monica office of his publisher. Surprise!

OK, so maybe you’re not stunned to learn that Delorm is coming out with a book later this month, “Diana & Dodi: A Love Story” (Tallfellow Press). The guy may have a publisher, but give him credit--he’s muddling his way toward the millennium without that other status symbol of the ‘90s, a personal publicist.

Anyway, after all the press hoopla over the ring and its significance--whether it was a friendship ring or an engagement ring or a dinner ring or an onion ring--Delorm wants to set the record straight. Chalk up one for romance.

“She was gorgeous, smart, she had a sense of humor, and on top of that she made him feel like a man,” he says with a thick French accent. The native Moroccan has the courtly bearing of a serious serving professional--he was a waiter at Spago and Ma Maison before his seven years with Dodi. And he has the tight jeans and cowboy boots of a single guy living near the beach.

“I never saw a woman being so intimate, outside the bed, of course, with him, never,” he says. “If the princess was busy doing something, as soon as he showed up, she would put down her book or whatever she was doing, and that’s why the man fell in love with her. I don’t think he was expecting that.”

Delorm contradicted press reports that the ring was found in the crash. He says he found it a couple of days later, in Dodi’s Paris bedroom, suggesting that Dodi never had the chance to propose.

“After all his clothes were brought home from the dry cleaner, I made sure everything was the way he liked in case his father came. And I think, I guess I’m doing this for the last time.

“I opened the glass wardrobe, and I noticed a box, the one that he had shown me. Right away I called the father. He said, ‘Rene, will you please look for whatever belonged to Dodi.’ ”

Delorm found Dodi’s briefcase and flicked the combination lock to the numbers his employer had always used for luggage--a string of zeros. Inside was a trove of men’s jewelry.

Then he found a crystal wine glass on a living room table. He had missed it a few nights earlier when he cleared the dishes from the couple’s pre-dinner drinks and caviar. Dodi had sipped his usual vodka; Diana, her half-glass of wine. A glass was still there, hidden among crystal decanters and candy dishes on the table. Delorm immediately knew who had used it last.

“I saw the lipstick, an old fingerprint and the crystallized wine that was left, and I said, ‘My God, I would love to keep it.’ But I couldn’t. I told the father, because I was sure it would have more value to him than to me.”

The next day, Delorm took a helicopter to London, where he presented the treasures to Dodi’s father, Mohammed Al Fayed.

“He took the glass. I could see how upset he was, and he put it back in the box.”

Delorm doesn’t know what Fayed has done with the treasures. After the crash, Delorm just wanted to return home to L.A., where he has kept a low profile. Until now.

Even during the four years he worked for Dodi here, before moving with him to Paris, “I lived in my building in Santa Monica on the beach and nobody knew who I was working for,” Delorm recalls. “Nobody.”

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The Marrying Kind: Should we be surprised that l’amour walks the halls of power, even those of our humble little L.A. City Hall? The feet belong to Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo, 38, and his legislative sweetie, Michelle Namen, 28, a deputy for Councilman Joel Wachs. They’re marrying in Malibu on Saturday after a yearlong romance.

We think it’s the public’s right to know what a romantic guy it has for a deputy mayor. Delgadillo says he first spotted Namen leaning against a tree on the south lawn of City Hall during Mayor Richard Riordan’s second inauguration. He tracked her down, and within a couple of dates he was able to do the math--Namen was the One.

“Everyone had always said ‘You’ll just know,’ and I never really believed that. But when I met Michelle, it hit me right between the beats of my heart.”

Swooooon.

Namen was a marked woman, and on the eve of New Year’s Eve, Delgadillo sent a note to her office with a crystal slipper and a flower box crammed with roses.

“I asked her to meet me at what we call ‘the inaugural tree,’ the tree she was leaning against when I first saw her. I was standing behind her then, and I did it again and said, ‘Sometimes the first step in life’s greatest journey is a step back, and if you want to go on life’s greatest journey, please take a step back.’ Then I held her and whisked her to the top of City Hall.”

At the top, he pointed to East L.A., where he grew up. “I got down on my knee and asked for her hand. Then I gave her the engagement ring.”

Really? What’s it like?

“It’s nice. It’s substantial.”

Whatever.

And now, a quiz: What Beverly Hills and New York hairdresser is adorable, really loves women, has fabulous taste and yet--despite the odds--is the marrying kind?

Alas, we regret to inform you that Frederic Fekkai, 39, recently became engaged. He’s marrying art consultant Elizabeth Shiell, 42, the mother of his 4-year-old son, Alexander, “who’s fantastique,” Fekkai says. They’re marrying Oct. 10 at Provence, a restaurant in New York’s SoHo.

Fekkai says they waited five years to marry “because we were not ready, the two of us. And after all these years, we just decided we are meant for each other.

“We’ve had a rocky situation sometimes, I guess because we both have a strong character. But we have the same taste, the same ideas. I’m very French in some ways, and she’s American, but she has a taste for European culture. And frankly I’m thrilled to be getting married.”

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A Lucky Guy: Some little boys want to be firemen when they grow up. Others want to be astronauts. Still others want to work with Brian De Palma.

“I’ve been a fan of his since I was 11 and I saw ‘Phantom of the Paradise,’ ” says Nicolas Cage. “I had wanted to work with Brian, not knowing that necessarily I would be an actor, but I liked his movies.”

Lucky boy. We’re chatting with the ebullient actor at the recent premiere of “Snake Eyes,” his first film with director De Palma. This is Cage’s lucky week. This night is the block party on the Paramount lot where Cage and co-stars Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino are being feted by a hungry throng of well-wishers and a passel of Arquettes, including Cage’s wife, Patricia, and honorary Arquette Courteney Cox, who’s dating David Arquette.

And the next night, the lucky boy’s lucky number was 2,112--there are that many stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now that Cage’s has joined the pedestrian galaxy.

But for now, Cage is singing the praises of the absent De Palma.

“When I saw ‘Carrie,’ I thought, this is a remarkably sensitive portrayal of a woman with a lot of problems, and that’s not easy to do. A lot of men don’t demonstrate a lot of sensitivity.”

Really? In Los Angeles?

“Then I saw ‘Scarface,’ and I knew that Brian was really versatile and had limitless talent.”

And you wanted to work with him.

“Oh, yeah, but he never called.”

God bless Pac Bell. Oh, yes. And Oscar.