Bully who treated his pretty young workers as playthings
FROM the moment Mohamed Fayed arrived in London in 1964 as a slim, 35-year-old shipping broker-cum-fixer, he began carving a reputation as a flamboyant and successful tycoon. Falsely, he claimed to be the son of ‘an old established Egyptian family’ whose fortune was founded a century earlier by their grandfather, who grew cotton in the Nile delta which they exported to Lancashire.
In truth, he was a former door-to-door salesman who had also sold bottles of Coca-Cola on the streets of the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
That said, over time, he bought the plush Harrods department store which bequeathed the social acceptance he desperately craved.
But beneath this glitzy patina, Fayed was a groping pest, bully, liar and political briber. There were notorious stories of his conduct, including accusations of sexual harassment of female employees in his office.
While doing research for my unofficial biography of Fayed, which was published in 2001, I was told countless stories about this ‘sex-crazed’ tycoon.
For example, blonde Scandinavian models were invited to parties in his homes. Other such evenings were overseen by a German woman who recruited pretty young girls as domestics with the promise of good pay and accommodation to care for Fayed and his son Dodi.
Dressed in seductive gingham dresses with white knickers, white bras and white socks to accentuate their youth (although they were over 16), the girls would inevitably be entranced by comments by Fayed such as: ‘You like working for me?’ You look after me and I look after you.’
Surprisingly, none of the girls’ bedrooms on the floor below the penthouse could be locked. Sex toys and other such paraphernalia were regularly found there.
One of these young models – and a particular Fayed favourite – was Ros Ashley. The Harrods boss would say to her: ‘Come to me pussycat.’ As they canoodled and she stroked him, Fayed would whisper ‘Meow’ as he snuggled her breasts.
Ros understood his enjoyment of the game: She played mother cat while he acted like a kitten.
Such episodes took place at 60 Park Lane, his home in an eightstorey block of flats by Hyde Park in central London, near Harrods.
Naturally, Ros did not perform out of love. Formerly employed by the Select modelling agency, she expected payment.
‘Bring me some of your model friends,’ Fayed would say – and she duly supplied him with a constant stream of young girls.
Among frequent visitors was Louisa Dyrbusz, a 21-year- old prostitute working for a group called the ‘ Flying Squad’ ( an ironic reference to the team of Scotland Yard detectives). Other girls were Claudia, a long-legged German girl; Jill, usually wearing leather and hence known to security guards as ‘All the Kit’; Vanessa, a well-built blonde, once found at 4am on Fayed’s staircase ‘delivering sandwiches’.
The most cherished women were nicknamed ‘the chairman’s babes’ – female members of staff selected during Fayed’s tour of Harrods. ‘Daddy will look after you,’ Fayed used to promise them in his Park Lane office, handing them six £50 notes. ‘Buy yourself some new clothes.’
Daily, Fayed would tour Harrods for what his armed bodyguards called ‘babe-spotting’. Often, they were enticed with offers of trips to Paris or St Tropez on Fayed’s Gulfstream jet. Those who backed out at the last minute would be given a train ticket home. Those who obliged were given Cartier jewellery. Attachment to Fayed brought promotion within Harrods and occasionally accommodation in Fayed-owned flats near St John’s Wood and Fulham.
Regularly, at 10pm, Fayed would be chauffeured to those flats to ‘tuck my girls into bed’.
Fayed felt no shame about his conduct. ‘They’re his toys,’ was the view of his staff.
Paradoxically, Fayed, who endlessly complained about his honour being insulted by the Royal Family during his feud following his son’s death with Princess Diana and who spoke provocatively of Prince Philip’s ‘Nazi background’, didn’t seem bothered about the honour of these young women.
‘Find me another,’ Fayed repeatedly ordered personnel staff who understood the requirement for blonde, beautiful, young girls to work in his private office.
However, many girls objected to Fayed’s advances. For example, the daughter of an American diplomat complained he assaulted her in St Tropez, where he had taken her while discussing whether she would get a contract to redesign his homes. And Pip Dumbill, a 24year-old nanny from New Zealand employed at his home in Oxted, Surrey, refused his advances in the middle of the night after he opened his dressing gown in a bedroom.
Hermina da Silva, a Portuguese domestic in Surrey, was awakened in her bedroom to find Fayed kissing and groping her. She screamed out and eventually fled the house, and received compensation.
AYOUNG woman lawyer offered work at Harrods was upset when Fayed brushed against her body. She said he touched her breasts and groped her. ‘Did you have a good fug on Sunday?’ he asked her, waving £50 notes at her.
She duly complained to Harrods staff about Fayed ‘stuffing money into my cleavage’. Their response was: ‘He stuffs fifties everywhere else, why not into your tits?’
‘Little people’ never troubled Fayed. His victims, he believed, were too embarrassed to reveal his misconduct.
Few should have been surprised by his obsession with sex. Paintings and statues of naked nymphs dominated his homes. His own gigantic bed in Oxted, raised on a plinth, was covered with black and white velvet, surrounded by paintings of naked girls.
Adjacent to the bedroom was a huge spa bath lit by spotlights created to represent a scene from a Roman orgy. ‘My recreation room,’ guffawed Fayed.
Behaving like an autocrat who could buy anyone off, Fayed had wads of £50 notes in locked drawers to pay his staff, compliant politicians and girls. Sealed in another drawer were secretly recorded conversations of targeted personalities discussing their sex lives.
It was one of Fayed’s favourites, Ros Ashley, who some years ago exposed him as the shameless manipulator that he is.
At the height of their relationship, he gave her a diamond pendant for her birthday. After their affair was over, she got it valued. ‘Worthless,’ she was told.
Fake diamonds from the fake Pasha – that was the true testament of the man whose bid for fame, fortune and acceptance by the British Establishment has long broken into a thousand pieces of fool’s gold.