Fayed: The Unauthorised Biography by Tom Bower Macmillan 496pp, £20.90 in UK
If Mohammed Fayed appeared as a character in fiction, he would be totally unbelievable. Who, for example, can credit the story of the ginger tom? This cat incurred the displeasure of the owner of Harrods and Fayed ordered it poisoned. The operation was given to a John Evans, a former SAS soldier and bearer of the Military Medal for covert actions in Ulster. Evans decided to shoot the cat rather than risk poisoning other animals on Fayed's country estate. But Evans shot the wrong ginger tom. The deceased, unfortunately for Evans, happened to be the favourite cat of Fayed's children. Fayed, who has difficulty with the consonants "c" and "k" when they occur together, roared: "Fuggin' nothing is fuggin' done properly."
For his incompetence, Evans was banished to Scotland - but not before he had shot the right cat. Camouflaging himself in SAS-style fatigues, Evan stalked his prey by night. Under the moonlit sky, the cat appeared and Evans fired. The cat was only wounded and managed to drag itself indoors. Terrified that Fayed would discover the latest botch-up, Evans summoned every security guard and dog handler to find the cat. Eventually it was located and Evans administered the coup de grace.
This bizarre story is one of the less exotic in Fayed: The Unauthorised Biography, which as it happens opens on a feline theme. "`Meow, Meow.' The brown head emerged from the white Egyptian-cotton sheets. `Come to me, pussycat,' sighed the blonde, stroking the fifty-year-old man. `Meow.' `Nice pussycat,' cooed the beautiful young model. The Arab snuggled his head between the woman's breasts. `Meow,' he whispered into her chest."
The author, Tom Bower, is renowned for the access he gains to his subjects, but did even Bower get that close? Vastly entertaining though the book is, one has to ask how Bower can possibly know that some of the events happened as he describes. Bower tells us in a preface that he first met Fayed in 1991 when researching a biography of the Egyptian's bitter enemy, "Tiny" Rowland. That they remained friends is clear from the fact that Fayed flew Bower to Paris in his helicopter after the car crash in which his son Dodi and Princess Diana died in September. Bower says Fayed invited him to write an authorised biography.
Fayed turned against Bower when he persisted with his project to write an unauthorised biography, but he claims: "I have not allowed [Fayed's] attitude to influence this biography". Methinks the biographer doth protest too much. Then there is the casual racism - "like most Egyptians, who are not commonly associated with bravery . . ."
For all the caveats, we are left with a book which convincingly depicts a monster. Fayed begins life in poor circumstances but arrives in England with a curriculum vitae which describes a pasha dispossessed by the socialist Colonel Nasser. This version of Fayed's life will go unchallenged by journalists for years until the truth is finally uncovered by another mountebank, "Tiny" Rowland.
Bower describes well how Fayed understood that the trappings of wealth are almost as good as the real thing when it comes to impressing people. The Rolls-Royce may be rented but the pampered passenger is not to know that. Crucially, Fayed managed to win the confidence of the Sultan of Brunei, who believed the straw figure to be a man of substance.
Fayed persuaded the Sultan to deposit money in Switzerland which enabled the Egyptian to mount his bid for the House of Fraser and its flagship store, Harrods. Fayed had the use of the cash long enough to buy the shares. This, too, went undetected by the financial journalists. The truth was finally unearthed by the other Harrods bidder, Rowland. Bower is not good at explaining how Fayed ran the business he bought.
The extravagance is well documented, as are the eccentricities of the owner. But how did he make money on a business bought on borrowed funds? Bower says he was settling an allowance of £120,000 a month on son Dodi. He had a number of Tory MPs to bribe. He had several homes to keep, a Gulfstream jet and a helicopter. Private security was costing £4 million. Somehow, Harrods had to be making money to finance this and yet Fayed is portrayed as an incompetent, autocratic owner.
Despite unabashed sucking-up to the Establishment, Fayed did not succeed in getting British citizenship. He turned against the Tories who, he believed, having been bought, should have stayed bought. In a particularly cruel blow, the committee of the Windsor Horse Show informed Fayed that Harrods' sponsorship was no longer desired. He bought the lease to the villa used by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in their Paris exile, believing this would bring him closer to the British royal family. Now, that was a miscalculation.
His son's courtship with Princess Diana was shamelessly exploited in the media by Fayed. Dodi was a dissolute playboy and Diana must have been very desperate indeed to have anything to do with him. When they died, Fayed spread the word that they were deeply in love and had plans to marry. The only plausible evidence for this is Dodi's ditching of his Californian fiancee two days before the wedding day. It was Fayed too who put the word out that British Intelligence had assassinated Diana in order to prevent the shame of her marrying an Egyptian.
All in all, then, not a very nice man. Bower has not the most felicitous touch with the English language - "Gradually, [Fayed's] status was being corroded as Rowland's propaganda connecting him with the sultan was slowly establishing itself as the truth." However, the portrait of the monster he is describing drives the narrative along at a fuggin' rate of knots.