ONLY HERE FOR THE LEER
My life and times with that old cock of the walk Fayed
Those of us who knew Mohamed Fayed (the -al prefix was a bit of self-aggrandisement) certainly thought of him as a rogue whose relationship with the truth was non-existent. But now, to our consternation he is revealed as a monster, a serial rapist who, like the odious Jimmy Savile, got away with his crimes until after death came knocking.
The merry go-round of Sloaney young things who graced the outer office of the chairman’s suite on the top floor of the iconic Harrods building was a thing of wonder and of endless amusement. Now we know they were being lined up to be molested, pawed over and raped by a man at least 50 years older. Once used, he would hand them a bottle of Dettol with instructions to wash away the evidence of his vile ways.
Fayed collected these girls just as he collected MPs, minor royals (and of course one very senior one), and journalists. It was quite a roll call: Andrew Neil, Peregrine Worsthorne, Brian Hitchen and the saturnine Stewart Stephen, the man who, while at the Express, was responsible for the ludicrous fake story of Martin Boorman and, then at the Mail, the even more flawed British Leyland letters saga.
And Fayed collected me.
It began just after I returned from Chernobyl and the skeleton of the stricken reactor. He had read the series of pieces I had written on the legacy the nuclear explosion had brought to the children of Ukraine and Belarus. Kids born with gross deformities, cancer and thyroid problems. I was in morning conference when my PA Helene Costas asked me if I would take a call from Fayed.
‘Come and see me, I want to help those poor kids.’ Within an hour I had made my way past the phalanx of pretty girls on the fifth floor and was in the presence of a man I knew only through the gossip columns and the occasional profile in the City pages.
The beam was infectious and he seemed genuinely concerned about trying to help raise money for the Express Appeal for Chernobyl which we had just set up. He was as good as his word; in return for me (or rather David Wigg) organising a series of stars to open the twice-yearly Harrods sales, the appeal would benefit by thousands from the first day’s takings.
I saw him regularly and his greeting rarely varied: ‘Mate, ow’s your cock?’ A reply was neither expected nor forthcoming. For the first year of our friendship, for that is what it appeared to be, the Express backed his own campaign on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hospital which was born out of the care it gave his son Karim immediately after his birth. I have no doubt, even now after watching the truly shocking BBC documentary, Predator at Harrods, that his charitable interests were genuine (though of course it did his reputation no harm.)
I travelled with him to Paris on several occasions, stayed at the Ritz, visited Villa Windsor and spent a long weekend with my then wife at Balnagowan, his pink fairytale of a castle in Invergordon. At the time I lived a mere three miles from him in Oxted (his place was bigger than mine) and after I left the Express in 1995 I was stupid enough to turn down two very decent offers from the Rothermere empire to work for Fayed for 18 months.
My mission: to help him buy his way into the media. And it nearly worked, but only nearly. His bid to buy Today from Murdoch mysteriously failed after all terms had been agreed; similarly his offer for LBC got through all but the final stage of ownership transfer when the Radio Authority deemed him unsuitable. Finally, he bought the defunct Punch magazine, against my advice, and installed Mike Molloy as a director and Peter McKay as editor. It was a resounding failure and waste of money.
It was while working for Fayed that his true character quickly emerged. His visceral hatred of the Royal Family who he believed (probably correctly) that, despite his pouring money at them, thought of him as not to be trusted and best to be avoided.
On one occasion while I was still at the Express Andrew Neil and I were with him on the balcony of his penthouse at 60 Park Lane when in the near distance he spotted a helicopter rising from the grounds of Buckingham Palace. ‘Look at that, it’s fuggin’ Prince fuggin’ Philip, the fuggin’ Greek. That’s your money he’s using on his fuggin’ toys.’
He had a point because the royals were going through one of their periodic unpopular patches and there was a distinct whiff of revolt abroad. I returned to the Lubyanka and wrote a leader page piece on why the Family needed to heed the way the wind was blowing.
Shortly after I parted company with the Express I was interviewed by Maureen Orth who wrote a very long and critical profile of Fayed for Vanity Fair. She quoted me accurately when I said ‘If you sup with Mohamed you will need a long spoon.’ Fayed was not amused by my very tiny contribution or by the gist of the piece which essentially related how he had lied throughout his life and in particular about how his inventions had bought him the most famous store in the world. (In that respect there is a great similarity with Trump; lie and lie again and you will believe it yourself).
He sued Vanity Fair but finally gave up more than two years later following the death of Diana and Dodi.
Ah yes, Dodi. Until Fayed engineered the relationship between Diana and Dodi, he regarded his first born as a waste of space and money. When I moved into an office in Brompton Road above Harrods Estates it was shared with a strange boudoir of a room which was Dodi’s domain: the walls and floor all leopard skin. On one occasion on a hot summer’s day the young Fayed arrived in a full length fur coat. Even for a renowned cokehead it was peculiar.
‘Tell him to fug off,’ his father told me. I didn’t. I never saw him again. Then he met Diana and suddenly he was a weapon in his father’s armoury. And we all know how that ended.
What is surprising in the documentary is that the deaths in the Alma Tunnel brought only a lull in Fayed’s wicked sexual aggression. He continued to molest and rape the women, one as young as 15, whom he had employed for one purpose only. And he continued to do so into his late eighties.
It can be revealed that each girl who left Harrods after being molested (at the very least) by Fayed was given £50,000 from a slush fund kept specially for that purpose. They had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Only after his death 13 months ago at the age of 94 were they legally free to talk about their time with the so-called Phoney Pharaoh.
Fayed was not alone, I’m told that Robert Maxwell had a similar approach to young and attractive female employees.
All the while he was protected by a sinister group of minders mostly recruited from the ranks of Met Police and Special Forces. And just about every leading law firm in London for the simple reason, he told me, that if you get them working for you they can’t then take on anyone wanting to sue. ‘Conflict of interest you see.’
Fayed’s Apologist-in-Chief was the oleaginous bouffanted Michael Cole, formerly of the BBC. Even in retirement he was his master’s voice. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the latest series of horrific true stories.
Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods is available on BBC iPlayer.
ALAN FRAME
20 September 2024
