Mohammed Al Fayed’s former PR man Michael Cole knew nothing about the rape and sex assault allegations against the ex-Harrods boss, his wife insisted today.
Former BBC Royal correspondent Mr Cole, 81, famously worked as a public relations guru for Fayed while he was the official spokesperson for Harrods for ten years between 1988 and 1998.
He reportedly carried on advising the now disgraced late Egyptian tycoon after taking early retirement from the luxury London department store.
More than 20 women employees of billionaire Fayed have told the BBC that they were sexually assaulted by him, including five who said they had been raped.
Many of the alleged attacks happened when Mr Cole was handling public relations for Fayed in the period which included the death of Diana Princess of Wales and the businessman’s son Dodi in a Paris car crash in 1997.
Mohamed Al Fayed and Michael Cole pictured together at a premiere in Leicester Square in 2012
Mohamed Al Fayed (left) with Michael Cole (second left), leave the High Court in London in 2007
Mohamed Al Fayed pictured alongside Diana, Princess of Wales at a charity event held at Harrods in London in 1996
But Mr Cole’s wife Jane, 82, said the revelations in this week’s BBC documentary and podcast Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods had come as a ‘shock’ to them both.
Speaking from their converted barn home in Laxfield, Suffolk, she said of her husband:
‘He isn’t around. He’s not giving any interviews or talking at the moment.
‘It’s all terribly distressing and very, very sad. We’re very upset about it, and shocked and appalled. It’s best at the moment that Harrods deal with it.’
Asked if her husband had been aware of any of the rape or sex assault allegations during his time working for Fayed, she added: ‘Of course not, of course not’.
Speaking of her concern that the revelations would have on Fayed’s family including his Finnish-born second wife Heini, 69, she said: ‘It’s very sad for the family as well, Mrs Fayed and their children and grandchildren.’
Mr Cole had always spoken in glowing terms about Fayed, and once allegedly told a journalist after the death of Diana that he ‘loved’ him like a father.
He described him in glowing terms after his death aged 94 in August last year, saying in a comment that he might now regret, that he was ‘at heart, a family man’.
Mr Cole added in a gushing article: ‘In the Fayeds, there was a family who found complete contentment in simply being together.
Mohamed Al Fayed pictured with the Queen in 1997
Some of Fayed’s assaults are said to have been carried out at his Park Lane property in London
Mohamed Al Fayed (right) with son Dodi at a party for the film Hook in 1992
‘Mohamed never wanted to go to nightclubs or smart restaurants. He wasn’t interested in ‘Society’. His priority was his family, followed by his customers and staff, many of whom were recipients of his unbounded generosity.
‘Above all, he was larger than life and always kind and considerate. Apart from his family, his big love was Harrods. Even when he was on holiday, he would come back to London because he missed it.’
Mrs Cole declined to speak further, saying of her husband: ‘He has been retired a long time. We are now in our 80s. Michael left Harrods a long, long time ago.’
Mr Cole started his career as a journalist working for Anglia Television before joining the BBC in 1969, later covering the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
He covered Margaret Thatcher’s career following her election as Conservative Party leader in 1975, and was on hand at the rescue of Norman Tebbit after Brighton’s Grand Hotel was bombed by the IRA in 1984.
Mr Cole later served as a BBC Royal Correspondent before reportedly inadvertently revealing some of the year’s forthcoming Queen’s Christmas message to other reporters in 1987.
The subsequent scandal led to him being moved to report on media and arts before he left the BBC ten months later, after 27 years as a journalist, and joined Harrods as the store’s director of public affairs.
One of his alleged victims, Gemma, who worked for Al Fayed as a personal assistant between 2007 and 2009, says his behaviour would turn more frightening during work trips abroad
She says he raped her at Villa Windsor in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, a former home of post-abdication King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson
Mohamed Al Fayed pictured with his wife Heini Wathen in 2016. The couple had four children
His firefighting exploits on behalf of Fayed included denying a Department of Trade and Industry report which branded the billionaire as a liar, and voicing the Egyptian’s ire at not being granted British citizenship
Mr Cole who was described by some as ‘slavishly loyal’ to his boss became more widely known in his role when he spoke about Fayed’s grief in the aftermath of Dodi and Diana’s death following their fatal crash in a Parisian underpass in a Mercedes driven by drunken chauffeur Henri Paul.
He was reputedly paid a si- figure salary before he took early retirement at the age of 55 in 1998, prompting conspiracy theories about whether he was ‘pushed’ or left of his own accord.
Some reports suggested that he might have been uneasy about Fayed’s claims that his son and Diana were murdered and that he had been told of her ‘last words’ which doctors later claimed were never uttered.
Mr Cole later gave evidence to the inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi.
Victims of Fayed described him this week as a ‘monster’ and ‘sexual predator’ who treated women employees as ‘playthings’, carrying out rapes and assaults on them in London, St Tropez, Paris and Abu Dhabi.
It has been revealed that Harrods not only failed to intervene, but helped cover up abuse allegations when it was owned by Fayed.
Harrods’ current owners said they were ‘utterly appalled’ by the allegations and that his victims had been failed, for which the store sincerely apologised.
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