Princess Diana ridiculed reports Thursday that she is suffering a recurrence of an eating disorder she once described as stemming from a "spiral of secret despair."
In a rare impromptu speech, Diana mockingly told an audience of charity workers they were lucky to have her at their London meeting."I was supposed to have my head down the loo (toilet) for most of the day. I am supposed to be dragged off the minute I leave here by men in white coats," Diana said.
"If it is all right with you, I thought I would postpone my nervous breakdown to a more appropriate moment. It is amazing what a migraine can bring on," the 32-year-old princess said, referring to reports she had been suffering from a migraine earlier this week when she was photographed with tears in her eyes.
Dame Barbara Cartland, who is distantly related to Diana by marriage, said Wednesday night that the princess had been suffering from bulimia.
"I had heard she had had a slight attack of bulimia," Dame Barbara, 92, told the British national news agency Press Association.
The romance novelist's daughter Raine was Diana's stepmother. Diana's father died in April 1992.
Buckingham Palace refused to comment on Dame Barbara's remarks. A spokeswoman said: "We don't have any information at all on that."
A 1992 book by journalist Andrew Morton, "Diana: Her True Story," reported that she suffered from bulimia, in which people overeat, then purge, often through self-induced vomiting.