My very last moments with Jill

A WEEK or so after Jill Dando's appalling murder her fiance, Dr Alan Farthing, happened upon one of her notebooks. It contained a rough draft of the speech she intended to give on her wedding day. Alan wept. It was, he says, a hugely emotional moment. "Jill was very excited about the wedding. She was planning everything. She was going to make a speech on September 25 and talk about the things we shared together," he says.

"She made notes about the time she'd said, 'I love you because you're attractive and fun and intelligent and successful and you always make me laugh'. I'd said to her, 'I love you because you're always right'. I remembered it actually being said. She'd turned the bedroom light back on, saying, 'I must write that down because I'm going to use it against you at some time in the future'."

Jill was brutally murdered by a single bullet on her doorstep in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, West London, on a Monday morning some five months before that wedding day. There is still no obvious motive for the killing or prime suspect. Alan remains absolutely devastated. He was "devoted and deeply in love with her. She, in turn, was crazy about him.

He thought he was the luckiest man in the world to have found Jill. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, buy a home, raise a family. She wanted that, too. They telephoned or faxed one another every single day, no matter where Jill was in the world. Alan has kept her many faxes - he also now has the notes she'd saved from him.

"The person who killed Jill was a brutal, callous, calculated murderer who has taken one life and destroyed many others," he says. "I do have to keep reminding myself that it has actually happened. It's an unreal situation.

"In Britain you don't expect a kind, caring, loving person, who has never made any enemies that anyone is aware of, to get brutally murdered. But you do keep coming back to the fact that it has happened.

"Not knowing why she's been killed adds to the difficulties. I am forever wondering why. My main priority is to do everything I possibly can to help the police catch Jill's killer or killers. I am doing this interview at the specific request of the chief investigating officer to try to help."

Indeed, Alan is an intensely private man, who clearly finds it difficult to speak about his relationship with Jill. He is determined to remain dignified in his grief and has sought huge comfort and strength from his friends, colleagues and both his and Jill's families.

This is the first time he has spoken so frankly about his loss - and his words are deeply moving.

Yesterday, for instance, Jill was due to provide the BBC commentary for Prince Edward's marriage to Sophie Rhys-Jones.

"There are a number of significant dates that are difficult to get through and they will not diminish for quite some time. We were both always planning for the future. After we'd been seeing each other for a month we went on holiday to Australia. That was where we both realised our true feelings for each other.

ON New Year's Eve, we went to the Opera House in Sydney and watched the fireworks. They were stunningly spectacular and we pledged to each other we would come back to watch their millennium display. We had the tickets booked."

Alan also obtained a copy of a front page from the Sydney Morning Herald that shows the splendour of that display 18 months ago. He framed it for Jill. Until last week, it had hung in her Fulham home. Now, it hangs on his wall and is, he says, just one of so many poignant memories.

"It's the contrasts on that day that I find difficult to cope with," he says. "The thought that this happy, excited person should have somebody walk up to her, put a gun to her head and leave her lying dead on her doorstep, her very own doorstep.

"That Monday was the beginning of a two-week period when Jill was to be in London after several months of travelling. She was going to cook dinner for us that evening which is why she must have bought two fillets of fish. She also had lots of things to do for the wedding: she had an appointment for her first fitting for her wedding dress, she was going to a stationers to organise the invitations and we'd sat down the previous evening and put together a letter to Claridges about the reception.

"Jill posted the letter that Monday. Later on, she made a phone call to someone who was helping us to organise the honeymoon - it turned out to be one of her last phone calls.

"I'd had to get up to go to an 8am meeting. Jill always wanted to get up with me but I'd insisted she didn't. I told her it was a day she was to relax and there was absolutely no reason for her to get out of bed at 7am.

"I went to have a shower and came back to find my breakfast on the bed. She'd gone downstairs, made the breakfast, but dutifully got back into bed because I'd wagged my finger jokingly and told her she wasn't allowed to get up.

"I had breakfast and we talked about the day ahead. I left the house at 7.25am. She was planning to have lunch with a good friend and a bit of a gossip.

"She was really looking forward to it because she's normally just dashing from one meeting to another. She said: "Today, I'm going to be a lady who lunches."'

Alan, a consultant gynaecologist at St. Mary's Hospital, London, had almost finished his morning clinic when Jill's agent, Jon Roseman, paged him.

"It was about 1pm," he says. "Jon wanted me to call him urgently. The first question he asked was if Jill was with me. He said he had been contacted by the Press asking for his comments on reports that Jill had been attacked in her street. I asked if he'd tried her mobile. He said nobody had answered.

I THOUGHT it was unlikely anything serious had happened to her as I hadn't heard anything. It was common knowledge where I worked and someone could have got hold of me easily. I said I'd phone the local police station in Fulham to find out, but calls were being diverted to Kensington.

"The officer was very polite and said he would get someone to ring me back as soon as he found out what was going on. But the tone of his voice, and the fact that he confirmed Fulham was not taking any calls, obviously indicated that something had occurred. I was anxious to find out what was happening. It was the kind of situation you just can't imagine yourself being involved in.

"Then I got a message to ring casualty at St Mary's and the sister in charge told me Richard Quinn, who's a senior police officer I had previously met on holiday with Jill, and a colleague of his were there and wanted to see me urgently. I knew something serious had happened.

"I rushed to meet them. Richard took me to the side of the corridor and said that a lady fitting Jill's description had been attacked on Jill's doorstep and had been rushed to Charing Cross Hospital, where she had subsequently died from her injuries.

"That was when I first began to realise what might have happened. Richard emphasised that although they were concerned it may be Jill, they could not confirm it, and that's why I needed to go to Charing Cross. So, they rushed me across London.

"Initially, I clung to the hope that what they were saying was wrong. The police officers in the car couldn't give me any further details because they didn't have any.

"On the way to the hospital, I spoke to Nigel, Jill's brother. He's a reporter and he'd just heard what had happened through the news agencies. He said as far as he was aware, his father didn't know, but he was going straight there to tell him.

"I said, 'We don't know for certain that this is Jill. I'll call you back as soon as I know'.

"Due to the media presence, we drove to a side entrance, which was locked, so we had to wait for ten minutes to be let in. That was when I had my first chance to contemplate that Jill might have died. It was a strangely quiet time after the frenetic rush of the journey."

Alan falls silent. He is staring at the pencil he holds in his hand, but he doesn't see it. He is back there, at Charing Cross Hospital, reliving that dreadful day. It is the first time he has talked to anyone about the next terrible hour.

"They took me down what seemed like the longest corridor in the world to the casualty department and to a side room, where Jill was lying. She had a towel wrapped around her head as if she had just got out of the bath.

"She was lying in a hospital gown, looking peaceful. I held her hand, which was still warm, and confirmed to the officer it was Jill.

"I was then asked where I wanted to go, which was a decision I was incapable of making at the time. I wanted to stay with her and carry on holding her hand. The consultant in charge of casualty came to talk to me. He explained what had been done to try to resuscitate her, but made it plain it had been impossible. She had not been clinically alive on arrival or at any stage during the resuscitation.

"I asked him what he thought had happened, but all the information that was available had come from the ambulance crew and those who found Jill - not anybody who had seen precisely what had happened. It was clear though, she'd been brutally attacked.

"As I was being taken back down this everlasting corridor, I was thinking, 'Why did something like this happen? How could if happen?' I didn't think anybody could have possibly wanted to kill Jill. I thought possibly somebody was robbing her.

"I asked about her engagement ring. I hadn't seen her left arm because it was under the sheet covering her. I wanted to know what had happened to her bags and ring. No-one knew."

ALAN was taken away from the hospital by police. On the way he spoke to Jill's brother, his parents and two friends to tell them Jill was dead. "It was while I was with the police I was informed it appeared Jill had been shot.

"My first thought was people don't shoot somebody in the head unless it's an assassination. Then it dawned on me somebody had deliberately killed Jill."

Alan says he was in a state of complete shock. "It was a disbelief of the entire scenario but, at the same time, I was realistic enough to know that this was not a dream. I went to stay at a friend's that night. When I left the police, I was walking down the road to my friend's car. We passed two street sweepers, one of whom I heard saying, 'You know that woman from Crimewatch, it was her that's been killed'.

"It was a surreal experience - particularly then seeing the Evening Standard billboard headlines saying that your fiancee's been murdered."

Alan has asked himself why it happened a thousand times since Jill's death. He has racked his brain to come up with the tiniest piece of information that may help the police. He says he thinks about it frequently, particularly when he lays alone at night.

"Jill didn't really live at Gowan Avenue," he says. "She'd been living with me in Chiswick for about four months and used her Fulham address as an office.

"In fact, we'd only spent two nights in Gowan Avenue in the month preceding that Monday. We were hoping to move to a new home together in the middle of July.

"On the Friday night before she was murdered, Jill had just come back from Dublin. I had to race to get home before she did - and I made it by about 30 seconds. I cooked that night.

"Later a patient went into labour at about 2am, as a result we had a lazy Saturday. At lunchtime, I popped in to work to see my patient while Jill went over to Gowan Avenue. She was there long enough to realise that a new fax machine she had installed had run out of ink. That's why she had to go back there on Monday morning.

THE previous evening Jill and Alan watched the first episode of Antiques Inspectors - Jill's new programme. "I thought she was excellent," says Alan. "She brought a life and vigour to the programme, the sense of everyday friendliness that she brought to everything she did."

In the conversation they shared that night about their wedding plans, they also discussed the guest list Jill had written in her Filofax. Alan was to call upon this list when he helped to organise Jill's funeral. He made poignant reference to this at the service.

"Those of us who were involved with the funeral arrangements wanted a service that was appropriate for Jill. It was very important that it was sad but dignified. In so many ways, none of us knew how we would get through the day until it started. We were all doing our best to say what was appropriate and remember Jill with the dignity she would have wanted," says Alan.

"I'd found the perfect partner in Jill and not everybody has that opportunity or is given that honour in life. For that, I am extremely grateful and I feel very fortunate."

He has been close to tears many times during this deeply emotional interview. There are no words to console Alan - and he acknowledges this. He's coping by "making it up as I go along".'

He knows someone, somewhere has to be aware of who killed the vibrant woman he so loved. "I would like to appeal to a mother or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a sister, to anybody who knows someone who could be connected in any way to this brutal murder," he says. "Someone may have been hesitating because they didn't think the information was important, and perhaps now they think it's too late, or there might be recrimination from the police.

"I would appeal to these people directly to contact the police in the incident room, or to talk to Crime-stoppers if they want to remain anonymous. I just want someone to help me and other people to better understand what's happened to Jill."

The Jill Dando incident room is on 0181 246 0732. Daily Mail

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