Word: elder
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Mayfair apartment, Rolls-Royce and chauffeur. He is said to have abandoned a fledgling career in the United Arab Emirates air force in favor of one in show business, establishing a London film-production company in the late 1970s. "He was financed by his father," Khashoggi says. With the elder Fayed's help, Dodi supplied $3 million of the $6.5 million total budget for the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire. In subsequent years he announced dozens of projects that he later dropped, and most of his investments were modest. "Dodi didn't work a day in his life," says...
...dashing Dodi was royalty of a different sort. He was the only son of Mohamed al Fayed and his late first wife Samira Khashoggi, sister of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. The elder Al Fayed is a self-made billionaire whose wealth is greater than the Queen's. His sprawling empire contains some highly prized European properties. In addition to London's fashionable Harrods department store, he owns the Ritz Hotel of Paris, the British humor magazine Punch, the Fulham soccer club and a $32 million, 190-ft. yacht. The senior Al Fayed also holds a long-term lease...
Despite the elder Al Fayed's wealth, prestigious holdings and good works, he has never managed to be accepted into British society. He has lived in England for 20 years, and the four children of his second marriage are all British citizens. He was a friend of Diana's father, the late Lord Spencer, and employs her stepmother Raine, Countess de Chambrun, as a director of Harrods International, the store's duty-free arm. Al Fayed sponsors the Royal Windsor Horse Show, at which he shares the Queen's box. Still, the British government has for years denied his requests...
...back--or, as the Independent put it, "cock a snook"--at the British Establishment. Nothing would have made him happier, some royal watchers contend, than for his son to become stepfather to the future King of England. Dodi and Diana's liaison reportedly began when the elder Al Fayed invited the princess and her two sons to vacation with his family at his villa in St.-Tropez. Adnan Khashoggi told a Saudi newspaper last month, "We welcome Diana into our family." The relationship between Dodi and Di led to an "inflated sense of pride" for England's Middle Eastern...
...that Al Fayeds' wealth could do more for the princess than she could do for them. With Al Fayeds' seemingly endless supply of mansions, boats, helicopters and bodyguards, Dodi had the material resources to provide her with the stability and privacy that her life was so lacking in. The elder Al Fayed's decision to auction off the contents of the Windsor villa set off speculation that he was cleaning it out so that Dodi and Di could marry and move in. There would have been rich symbolism in the two of them living together in the Duke and Duchess...