First-Hand: We shouldn't begrudge Diana the odd pedicure: Marilyn Galsworthy, owner of an SW1 boutique, defends the Princess of Wales's pounds 3,000-a-week grooming bill

I WAS outraged when I saw the articles about Diana. Look at the amount of tourist industry that she generates: billions and billions of pounds that she alone has brought into this country. By comparison, the sum she spends on grooming is paltry. Absolutely paltry.

All Diana's set come into my shop. I opened it about three years ago, when I decided I didn't want to be a pampered spoilt housewife. It's called Bon Chic, Bon Genre - which is French for well-bred, cultured with a lot of style. Opening the shop was an obvious thing for a shopaholic like me to do. Now that I've got the business, I don't have to do so much shopping] Everybody's got different vices - some people eat cream cakes, some like to have aromatherapy, some people buy clothes; it's a way of loving yourself, or being approved of, or something - whatever your wo-wo is. And everybody's got a different wo-wo.

My clients like to look unique. I suppose they'll pay around pounds 1,200 for a silk cocktail dress, pounds 2,000 for an ordinary suit and around pounds 2,500 for something evening-y. They wouldn't buy anything off-the-peg. They think it's a bit like school uniform; everyone's in it. And I must say, I agree. Emporio Armani, for example, really is becoming like Marks and Spencers - everybody's wearing the same thing. I have to keep almost biblically detailed records about who's bought what. Because if anyone realises another person has got the same thing on as them, they go completely mad.

I was brought up in Sussex, and came to London when I was 18 and lived in a flat in Kensington Church Street. I went to drama school when I was 21, after which I got my first job as the James Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me. Then I got married to someone who owns a company called Sacha shoes.

We live in Knightsbridge with our three daughters, Pandora, Jessica and Jasmine.

I run the business three days a week; the other days someone else runs it. The days I'm not working, I'll lunch with a girlfriend and I'll play tennis at the Vanderbilt Club. I also sit on various charity committees - the NSPCC, the Red Cross, things like that.

It's impossible for me to estimate how much I spend on clothes. Diana is given an enormous amount of clothes - I'm sure her bill's exaggerated. That's why I think it's so unfair. Twice a week I go to Nicky Clarke's to have my hair washed and blow dried. That costs pounds 14 a time, which is not extortionate. It's part of my businesss to look good the whole time. I have my hair cut about every three weeks. He is jolly expensive - but I do think he does a jolly good hair cut.

Every three weeks or so, I go to my favourite facial person: Jo Malone in Cadogan something-or-other. She does all the royalty, the peripheral aristos - all of that. She's quite a guru and she's quite expensive, I suppose. It's about pounds 95 a go.

And then I spend about pounds 10 a week on having a pedicure done. The tabloids were complaining about the pounds 322 they estimated Diana spent on manicures and pedicures. But let me explain about pedicures. Women who have pedicures do not like having them done in public. They do not like sitting there with their their legs in a bowl of water in the middle of a salon. Very few people are ever seen having a pedicure, because most women have people who come round to their house instead.

Most of my clients live in Knightsbridge and Belgravia. Some might come from places like Wimbledon, but definitely not further afield than that. Not north of Selfridges] They work out at the Harbour Club most of the time. I have a fashion show there every fortnight, and all the women that come are size 8 or 10, thanks to all the exercise.

An average day would run something like this. They arrive at 10am after dropping off the children at school. Then they have their tennis coaching, followed by coffee. Then they begin their workout; then they have lunch; then they go and lie on the sunbed; then they have a massage; then they go and get the kids back from school and take them there to play tennis and swim.

You ask them how many days a week they go there and they'll tell you: five. It's actually their profession.

I really think that what was written about Diana this week was the tackiest, lowest form of bitchy back- biting I've ever seen. Everybody's saying that. In the light of the way Charles treated her generally, it's absolutely dreadful. Whenever anyone sees a picture of him in a newspaper they just flick over - but they stop at one of her.

Quite frankly, I think we're fortunate that the poor girl hasn't been locked up in the Charter Clinic in Chelsea for the last nine months - which would cost pounds 1,000 day. If the odd pedicure is all we have to pay for, we're jolly lucky indeed.

(Photographs omitted)