HOW FAST A LIFE?

Dodi Fayed's defenders say he disliked speed.

say the opposite

LAST Thursday's Times carried a long piece by Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of the James Bond film-maker, Cubby Broc- coli, and close friend of Dodi Fayed, in which she spoke about him as an 'absolute gentleman'.

Among other things she said that Dodi was 'terrified of speed', 'obsessive about safety', 'hated fast cars' and was 'paranoid about drinking and safety'. 'He would become worried even going at a normal speed. He would say, "We're not in a hurry, you know",' she added.

This struck many of us as odd, to say the least. Hadn't we been told back in June by, among others, the Sunday Mirror that Dodi `revels in fast cars' and owned 'a fleet of Ferraris'? The Times article looked suspi- ciously like another example of the desper- ate damage limitation exercise launched by Mohamed Al Fayed and his press spokesman, Michael Cole, in the wake of the crash. Mr Cole acted as soon as it became clear that the Paris Ritz staff, not the paparazzi, were the ones who seemed to be directly culpable for the tragedy, and that Dodi, the driver's boss, must also be implicated. For no chauffeur, however drunk, would put his foot down without the permission of his boss, would he?

The damage limitation exercise has not been a great success. It has been under- mined by the truth. First, Mr Al Fayed employed a Glaswegian professor of pathology to contest the first two blood tests done on the driver, Henri Paul, which found him to be more than three times over the French drink-drive limit, on the grounds that the blood sample used might have been contaminated.

Next, his PR team released Paris Ritz security video film which purported to show M. Paul walking in a sober fashion just before taking the wheel of the Mer- cedes 280.

But after a third test — done at the request of both M. Paul's family and Mr Al Fayed — supported the findings of the first two, even Mr Al Fayed had to give up try- ing to defend his driver. He is now said to be 'appalled' and 'outraged' that M. Paul drove in that state.

There is still, however, the role of his son, Dodi, left to defend — as Miss Broc- coli did in the Times. Her words will doubt- less be regarded by the Al Fayed public relations people as a rebuttal. I had said last week (`Cocaine, pregnancy, driver sui- cide', 13 September) that one of the pho- tographers had told the police he saw Dodi make a frantic waving motion as if to say, Tut your foot down,' when the Mercedes was stuck at a set of traffic lights in the Place de la Concorde, just before the start of the fast stretch of road leading to the underpass, the point at which the photogra- phers say that the Mercedes accelerated away and they lost sight of it. Miss Broccoli wrote in the Times that Dodi would habitu- ally ask drivers to slow down.

What, then, is the truth about Dodi, fast cars and speed? And was the Times doing the work of the Al Fayed PR machine? Since the crash, information on the sub- ject has been hard to come by. Mr Cole admits to journalists that Dodi owned a Ferrari in Los Angeles, a Mercedes in London and a Range Rover in Paris, but no more. An unnamed Al Fayed employee has told the American magazine Newsweek that Dodi was prone to commanding drivers to 'speed up and manoeuvre unex- pectedly'. That is about it.

But I have discovered that Dodi Fayed did indeed love fast cars. Not only did he own a fleet of Ferraris and Aston Martins — variously estimated at between five and 15 vehicles — but between 1989 and 1990 he even helped to run a Ferrari dealer's in East Horsley, Surrey. His father had bought the company, which was called Modena, after the town in Tuscany where the headquarters of the makers of some of the fastest cars in the world are situated.

`Mohamed Al Fayed loves Rolls-Royces, but his son, Dodi, was more of a fast-car man, given the circles he frequented,' a former Modena employee told me. 'He obviously liked fast cars, otherwise he wouldn't have been involved in the dealer- ship. We always got the impression that running Modena was a bit like Mr Al Fayed letting him do something to keep him occupied.'

Not only did Dodi like owning fast cars, according to the same former employee, he also enjoyed driving them. He sometimes even took part in invitation Ferrari races and 'drove round the circuit in his fireproof overalls just like everyone else'.

According to another former Modena employee, Dodi also used to like driving fast cars fast. 'When I heard what had hap- pened in Paris I couldn't help feeling that there was a lot more to it than the photog- raphers. It struck me that he would have loved the idea of being chased in his pow- erful car by paparazzi.'

Dodi, it seems, did love fast cars, con- trary to what the Times and Barbara Broc- coli would have us believe. He also, other friends have said, loved going fast in speed- boats. 'He particularly liked rough seas,' said one friend. Did his love for his Princess blind him so that his desire to show off to her and outpace the pack got the better of him and he uttered the fatal words to his driver: 'Step on it'? Mr Cole has been quoted as saying that Dodi was a `demon skier'. It seems he may also have been a demon driver as well.

`Bernie isn't ageing well.'