Whenever I met Mohamed Al Fayed – it was always complete madness

While Mohamed Al Fayed spent his final years in a dark fog of dementia, his life was defined by madness and often jaw-dropping excess. At that stage I was editor of the London Evening Standard and had started the “Dispossessed” campaign – starting a charity to help the least fortunate in the capital. He then sat closer and my jaw dropped as he boasted: “You know I have a very big dick!” A small pill box was pulled out of his jacket pocket. He opened it and said: “Please take.” In case I had not got the complete picture, he added: “Viagra. I had one final meeting with Al Fayed, again in the Georgian restaurant of Harrods, which was ostensibly about the Standard doing some business with Harrods but was actually mostly about his paranoia about being listened to by intelligence agents.