TALK OF THE TOWN: Mohamed Al Fayed’s son Omar seeks a truce as the Harrods tycoon’s health fails
Billionaire former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed lost his first son Dodi in the tragic car crash that also killed Princess Diana and was said to have all but lost another in a traumatic family rift.
But I’m happy to report that his youngest son Omar, 33, is now extending an olive branch to the Fayed clan, specifically his sister Camilla, with whom he has been embroiled in a legal battle.
Relations between the family and Omar – who was once set to inherit Harrods, the Knightsbridge store Mohamed owned – have soured of late. A source says Omar had ceased visiting his father at his Surrey estate – despite the fact the 92-year-old is ‘nearing the end of his life’.
Relations between the family and Omar – who was once set to inherit Harrods, the Knightsbridge store Mohamed owned – have soured of late. A source says Omar had ceased visiting his father at his Surrey estate – despite the fact the 92-year-old is ‘nearing the end of his life’.
Omar had been set to inherit Harrods, pictured, until he started legal proceedings against his sister Camilla in the High Court seeking £100k in damages
Al Fayed lost his first son Dodi, left, who was in a car with the Princess of Wales, pictured right
Tensions worsened last July when Omar filed a case against Camilla at the High Court, seeking £100,000 in damages after accusing her and her husband Mohamed Esreb of sending bodyguards to accost him during one of his rare visits to the estate.
Legal papers show that restaurateur Camilla denies the accusations and in her defence she said she believed Omar ‘was on drugs’ at the time. Last night Omar, who works for satirical magazine Punch, explained to me ‘he’s not a druggie’, is ready for a rapprochement and that Covid restrictions preventing him seeing his father may have been a source of rancour.
‘I love my sister very much and she knows that,’ he says. ‘Perhaps it was because I didn’t see my father for months during pandemic restrictions. We don’t necessarily get to choose our family members. Before my sister and her husband got together, she and I lived together and had many mutual friends. We were very, very close.’
I am told that Mohamed is unaware of the court battle between two of his children by second wife Heini Wathen. Another family source says: ‘This would hurt him so much.’
Rejecting Omar’s version of events, Camilla, 35, asks ‘how it is alleged’ that two bodyguards were acting under her ‘direction and control’.
It now seems unlikely the case will progress after a judge told them to settle their differences in private.