Full story here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050824.wdianharr0824/BNStory/International/
Maybe it should have been Amar!
Personal opinion – what a waste of good bronze..yuck!
MarkB
Well, there’s no accounting to taste, I suppose.
The work commissioned by Mr. al Fayed shows the couple, who were on vacation together when they died, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes beneath a soaring albatross — a symbol of eternity and good fortune.
An albatross??? I mean, has he read The Ancient Mariner???
The albatross isn’t a symbol of eternity and good fortune, you ninny, it’s the symbol of bad luck and old guilt!
The Londoners will be brutal.
What flavor is it? Does it come with a steering wheel?
It’s bloody albatross flavor! Bleedin’ seabird, bleedin’ flavor! Albatross!
It would have been a somewhat more interesting piece if they both were naked…ah nude. Diana has a very thin slip on and Dowdy Dodi has what two piece business suit…give me a break. His daddy may be rich but absolutely has no taste what so ever and the artist has very good understanding in the lack of imagination field.
As for the big bird, the only thing I get out of it is that the wing span has some kind of meaning in that their love (wing span) spams the world..
MarkB
Aaawwwww. It’s so cute.
An albatross! Too hilarious. 
“Symbol of eternity and good fortune”, indeed. Oh, I suppose it is in Bora Bora or somewhere.
Wadda ya mean cute! It’s only good for a clothes rack at Wal-Mart! Ya, and bet that you can buy fake bronze plastic copies inside for a few quid!
If you like this sort of genre, the new sculpture in Times Square of the V-J Day Kiss is much better and has lot more feeling to it.
Picture here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/life_kiss_dc
MarkB
Cute in the sense that Barbara Cartland “novels,” Precious Moments figurines, and newly emerged cicadas are cute.
You forgot to mention Amar’s “Hello Kitty” tattoo.
Poor Amar, forgotten already… 
…and its such a nice kitty…if you ike pink
I wonder if he’s got a collection of Elvis pictures on black velvet to serve as the proper backdrop for this work of art?
Just goes to prove that money and taste do not always go together.
I reckon Americans already proved that in the 19th century …
We have always been ready to prove that.
Try to think of it as an endearing quality. doesn’t help, does it?
Very Spammy indeed!
“Spam Spam Spam Spam, Spam Spam Spam Spam,
Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam…”
The albatross situation is interesting. Most dictionaries I checked have a definition like this:
http://www.answers.com/topic/albatross?hl=rime&hl=ancient&hl=mariner
“al·ba·tross (ăl’bə-trôs’, -trŏs’) n., pl. albatross or -tross·es.
Any of several large web-footed birds constituting the family Diomedeidae, chiefly of the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere, and having a hooked beak and long narrow wings.
A constant, worrisome burden. An obstacle to success.”
But albatrosses were considered good birds by mariners and it was the killing of the albatross that was evil and that brought on more evil, not the albatross itself. The dictionaries don’t make this clear, so I suppose the distinction is no longer clear in our language. Although I saw no mention of the albatross in any but maritime situations, making the choice of this bird rather strange for this tacky (Dodi’s shirt is open to his waist, that is no business suit!) sculpture, perhaps the sculptor is thinking of the albatross as it was by sailors. And I think we should all think of it that way, because it has done nothing wrong. It was the sailor that killed the innocent bird. Men are the ones that bring evil, not birds.
http://www.answers.com/topic/albatross
“It is a superstition among sailors that it is disastrous to shoot an albatross. Some travellers in the Southern Ocean have told accounts of particular Albatrosses following them for days or weeks. During the Vendée Globe singlehanded race around the world and other similar voyages, many of the sailors have reported albatrosses following them, and some have given names to the birds and that has helped them get through the long, hard, lonely trip through the Southern Ocean.”
http://blue1.emerson.u98.k12.me.us/chaplinzoo/albatross
“Sailors believed that albatrosses were a sign of good fortune. Legends go that when a sailor died, his soul flew up into the body of an albatross.
It was also believed that albatrosses were a sign of protection. If your ship was followed by one of these birds, no harm would come to her or any of her crew. The sailors thought that the bird was a dead comrade watching over them.
If a ship was lost and the crew saw an albatross, they would follow the bird. Supposedly they would be led back into familiar waters.
For these reasons, it was considered very bad luck to kill an albatross.”
http://www.yptenc.org.uk/docs/factsheets/animal_facts/albatross.html
“Sailors also used to regard the albatross as a harbinger of wind and storms, possibly because it has difficulty in flying during very calm weather. They also thought an albatross was a reincarnation of a sailor washed overboard, and it was thought very unlucky to kill one.”
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=3elokcg9surki?tname=the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner&curtab=2055_1&hl=albatross&sbid=lc03a
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
(1798) A poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about an old sailor who is compelled to tell strangers about the supernatural adventures that befell him at sea after he killed an albatross, a friendly sea bird.
Written in language that imitates the Anglo-Scots border ballads (which had only recently been introduced to the greater English public), it relates the supernatural events experienced by a mariner on a long sea voyage. During the voyage, the mariner kills an albatross with his crossbow. This crime arouses the wrath of supernatural spirits who pursue the ship, and the other members of the crew hang the albatross around the mariner’s neck.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/albatross-around-one-s-neck?hl=rime&hl=ancient&hl=mariner
“albatross around one’s neck
A heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success, as in The failed real estate scheme became an albatross around her neck, for now she could not interest other investors in a new project. This idiom comes from Samuel Coleridge’s narrative poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), which is based on the widespread superstition that it is unlucky to kill this large white sea bird. In the poem a sailor does kill an albatross, and when the ship then is becalmed near the equator and runs out of water, his shipmates blame him and force him to wear the dead bird around his neck.”
Wingspan can be up to 11 or 12 feet!!
Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans
British Antarctic Survey scientists who have been studying the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans on Bird Island, South Georgia, since the 1960s, have discovered a chronic year-on-year decrease not only in the survival of adult birds but also in the number of young birds surviving to enter the population. Recent studies show that three-quarters receive fishing debris (hooks, lines etc.) as part of meals delivered by their parents, thereby putting their lives at risk before they take their first flight. The breeding population has decreased by half since the 1960s, a huge amount for a species whose whole life history strategy is based on a high adult survival rate in the absence of adverse human impacts.
Albatrosses and other seabirds often feed by scavenging for food behind fishing vessels and other boats, waiting for prey to be disturbed or scraps thrown overboard.
When longlining, fishing boats set thousands of baited hooks on a fishing line to catch fish. Seabirds scavenging behind these boats try to eat the bait from the hooks as they are set behind the boat. Some birds swallow the hooks and are dragged underwater and drown.
More than 300,000 seabirds are killed in this way each year. 26 species of seabird, including 17 species of albatrosses, are in danger of extinction because of the deaths caused by longlining.
Once set, the hooks are too deep for the birds to reach. To stop birds being needlessly killed, it is essential to stop them having the opportunity to swallow the baited hooks before they have sunk.
Many cheap and readily implemented solutions have been, and are being developed. Employing these will be of benefit to the fishermen themselves because the more bait eaten by birds, the smaller the catch of fish.
Okay, well…
…it’s not a LIVE albatross. So it’s almost a dead albatross. And it was MADE that way. Made sorta dead. So it was almost like sorta killed. 
Face it, an albatross was a bad choice. Oh well, the pigeons will @#$% all over it no matter what it is…Guess Dodi wasn’t into falconry…
Harrod’s is known for an eccentric inventory, but I don’t think pigeons (live anyway) are available.
Reading over the posts… geeze, you guys are cruel!
Edit: since my “you guys are cruel!” was misinterpreted without an emoticon, I’ll say you guys are catty!