Diana, Princess of Wales, "knighted" the film producer Lord Puttnam with a poker from her fireplace on the day he received the real thing from the Queen at Buckingham palace.

Lord Puttnam has told how he was invited by the princess to come to lunch at her Kensington Palace home after his investiture in 1995. He and his wife arrived much earlier than the other guests.

During the conversation the princess, by then separated from the Prince of Wales, confessed that she had always wanted to perform the ceremony herself.

And so she did, in a manner of speaking. "She went and got the poker from the fireplace and less than one hour after I'd been to the palace, I was knighted by Princess Diana," Lord Puttnam said. He knelt before her and she dubbed him on each shoulder.

The peer, ennobled in 1997, revealed the scene for the first time at a gala dinner in London on Saturday night for the Teaching Awards, which he founded.

The event also featured the first annual lecture for the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial award for young people, given by the education secretary, Estelle Morris.

Ms Morris said the current generation of children were "the finest young people that we could ever wish for".

Lord Puttnam said he and the princess had become good friends. He described her as a remarkable but also a "damaged" person. She once told him: "The family I come from are nervous of people and find it very, very difficult to touch people. That's why I feel it's my job to do it twice as much."

Ted Wragg, professor of education at Exeter university, told the audience he had once dreamt of a similar situation, though with a less happy outcome. "This figure was coming towards me with a poker - it was Chris Woodhead."