WORKERS at a compact disc plant are pulling out all the stops to produce hundreds of thousands of copies of Elton John's tribute song to Diana, Princess of Wales.

A master tape of the moving version of Candle in the Wind was rushed to the PolyGram site in Blackburn just hours after it was recorded at a studio near Westminster Abbey.

Staff at the plant - one of Europe's largest CD manufacturing facilities - worked through the weekend on producing master CD copies from the tape.

Copies of the master will also flown to sister sites in Germany and France where more copies for the European market will be produced.

An initial production run for the Blackburn site has been put at 700,000 copies but it is expected to be many more.

"We're working flat out here at the moment. Obviously this has come on top of our normal workload so we're extremely busy," said a spokesman for the site.

The CD single, which some estimates have suggested could raise as much as £10 million for the memorial fund for Diana, is expected to be on sale by early next week.

Two years ago the Blackburn plant hit the headlines when it produced an all-star album called Help! in aid of a childrens' charity in Bosnia.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.