United Kingdom

Mohammed Al Fayed allegations raise horrifying prospect of possible collusion

Mohammed Al Fayed allegations have been a common suspicion for decades. (Image: PETER JOLLY NORTHPIX)

What amazes me is that anyone is surprised by allegations that Mohammed Al Fayed was a sex pest. It has been a common suspicion for decades.

I worked for one editor during the 1990s who played golf with Michael Cole, the former BBC royal correspondent who became Al-Fayed’s personal PR. The stories divulged at our staff dinners had the place on fire.

Someone else I used to know worked for Al-Fayed’s. He got through a lot of female staff from the late 1980s until the 2000s. And it didn’t take more than a few wines to get it out of her. And kitchen suppers across south London in 1997, the year Princess Diana and her lover, Al-Fayed’s son Dodi, died, thrummed with gossip about the former Harrods boss that would have your grandmother revolving in her grave.

How we choked on our retro prawn cocktails when a Dulwich mum spilled rumours about Al-Fayed making female employees bathe in Dettol before he forced himself on them.

We screamed with mirth. Some of us even believed it.

Now, as it turns out, there are infinitely worse allegations. Not only is he alleged to have made women wash themselves in disinfectant after assaults had taken place, to remove all trace of him, but also to have forced young, innocent women to undergo “sexual health tests” as a “perk of the job” before they were hired, giving the excuse his son Dodi suffered from “low immunity”.

The BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods dishes up nothing new in the way of ‘bombshell allegations’. It simply serves to confirm what many of us had known for years: that the sleazy Egyptian billionaire, who died last year at the age of 94, was alleged to be a serial rapist.

Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth “was warned about him”? Of course she was!

The Palace had had its suspicions ever since Al-Fayed spied an opportunity to get one over the government who had consistently refused him a British passport, and sent his wet son scuttling to pull the discarded Princess of Wales, and stick it to them.

Twenty female employees are believed to have been sexually assaulted by him, and that figure could rise to more than a 100? Keep counting.

For every single one who has been brave enough to come forward, tell their stories and seek the closure they deserve, there could be double or treble their number trembling in the shadows.

One of the tragedies in this scenario is that the staggering crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, Max Clifford, Rolf Harris and the evil rest might pale into insignificance against the Al-Fayed allegations.

As we watched the breaking news together, my mother asked me why.

“What’s the point in these girls blabbing all this nonsense now?” she said. “What good will it do any of them? They won’t get him back. The dirty old man is dead.”

It’s pointless to try to explain closure to an 89-year-old whose generation went to the ends of the Earth to keep up appearances, put up with rape within marriage and never reported abuse of any kind because “we were only women, we would never have been believed”.

The right to shed misery and torment caused through no fault of one’s own, to empty oneself of unthinkable violation and to tell the truth without shame or fear of consequences is a most basic human right.

We must own up. Put shock aside. Bad things happen when good people do nothing, remember? If Al-Fayed is indeed the monster he’s being portrayed as then all who knew, who covered up for him, every Harrods employee who deleted emails and files, every Met police officer who destroyed evidence, every security manager who turned a blind eye, must be found, named and prosecuted.

All who collude with a monster are as guilty as the monster himself.

Debicki stole the show at the Emmys

Debicki stole the show at the Emmys (Image: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

***

Black comedy-drama Baby Reindeer might have picked up six gongs at the Emmys earlier this week but Elizabeth Debicki, who won best supporting actress in a drama series for her role as Princess Diana in The Crown, stole the show.

The 34-year-old Australian looked stunning in a black Dior gown and minimal make-up. Even out of character, there was something incredibly Diana-like about the star. Until she opened her mouth. “Playing this part based on this unparalleled, incredible human being has been my great privilege. It’s been a gift,” she said.

Nope, she’s most definitely a luvvie.

***

Israel‘s use of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies against Hezbollah has sparked fears that one day soon smartphones and internet-capable household appliances could be hijacked in warfare With a simple flick of a switch, such gadgets could become weapons of mass destruction, killing or maiming millions.

This must be an immediate wake-up call to politicians worldwide. We’ve sleepwalked into over-reliance on technology, much of it manufactured abroad, and now, as well as losing our humanity to our phones, we’re in danger of losing our lives.

***

Congratulations to Dame Maureen Lipman who’s announced her engagement to her business consultant boyfriend after popping the question herself.

Maureen, who is 78, revealed she got down on one knee to her partner, also 78, while attempting to make a joke on a train journey. “Later that night my partner David and I decided to tell our children that, with a combined age of 156, we are going to get married,” she admitted. Just goes to show, marriage is no joking matter.

This is taking things way too far

This is taking things way too far (Image: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)

***

Models wore outlandish, futuristic shades and bizarre visors at Prada’s Milan’s Fashion Week show. I know we all want to stick our heads in the sand occasionally but this is taking things way too far. However, not even they could distract from the absolutely stick-thin models.

***

Lynda La Plante has revealed that Mick Jagger and David Bowie once summoned her help to write the script for a murder mystery movie they both wanted to star in.

The trouble was, surprise, surprise, that they were both still hungover from whatever they had been on when they dreamed up the idea and they couldn’t agree on who would play the assassin, or remember any plot they might have come up with.

If you ask me, Bowie would have been nailed on as the murderer, having ruthlessly killed off Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane when it suited him, and having already made plain David Jones from Bromley the first victim of his quest for fame.

Jagger would have made the perfect world-weary detective, except that he’d get no satisfactory collar. But he’d keep going, and going, and going.

***

Parents are rightly up in arms after a school banned skirts from its uniform and threatened any girl who wore one with detention.

This comes in an age when schoolchildren are increasingly taught about gender fluidity. It was reported in the same week that a boy at another school was allowed to identify as a wolf. So school pupils these days can claim to be any of up to 72 human genders, or even a completely different species, but at Hayling College, Hants, they all have to dress the same. Is it me or has the world gone mad?

Checkout latest world news below links :
World News || Latest News || U.S. News

Source link

Back to top button