There’s a reason why I feel unease about the Mohamed Al Fayed allegations, the ones suggesting that he sexually assaulted umpteen women and regarded Harrods employees as fair game. It’s because I was around during the time he was trying to penetrate the Establishment, a more difficult call in the 1990s than now, and I was quite willing to take his hospitality. In fact I asked his press secretary Michael Cole, to put me up in the Paris Ritz, and he did. Twice. Naturally I wrote about it all for this paper, making clear that I owed my stay to Mohamed Al Fayed (thank you) and when I suggested that I’d be perfectly happy to have a honeymoon there at his expense, he, possibly at the behest of Michael Cole, wrote me a nice letter in reply.
During the course of my stay I was taken to visit the Paris mansion formerly owned by the Duke of Windsor, which was brilliantly reproduced in the Diana episode of The Crown. It was very much still a shrine to the Windsors; the tapestry cushions of the Duke, stitched by his own hand, that sort of thing. Being entertained there would not, I felt, prevent me from biting the hand that fed me, but all the same, I wonder how much we were compromised by being so willing to stay at the Ritz, drink his champagne, enjoy ourselves at his expense. This paper’s editor at the time, Stewart Steven, did not enjoy Al Fayed’s hospitality; lesser fry were less picky.
