Convicted paedophile Max Clifford boasted of covering up for ‘randy old sod’ Mohamed Al Fayed because he ‘paid £250,000 to local children’s hospice’.
The shamed PR guru, who had represented the Harrods boss for 15 years, was secretly recorded in 2008 speaking about the late Harrods owner in footage that was aired last night in a new BBC documentary – Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods.
In the clip he is heard describing Al Fayed, who, following his death last year, has been accused of rape by five women, as a man ‘who’s 76, but going on 18 when it comes to the ladies’, adding that he is a ‘randy old sod’.
‘One of the many things he does is £250,000 a year to the CHASE hospice that I am a patron of. It all works extremely well,’ he continued.
When Clifford is asked whether that could be interpreted as Al Fayed paying off his victims, he said: ‘Well you know in that situation, if he is groping 17-year-olds that are quite willing because they are being paid a lot of money – fine.’
The clip shown in the BBC documentary comes from an interview in 2008 where Clifford spoke to journalist Chris Atkins as part of a documentary named Starsuckers.
Mr Atkins approached Clifford for a normal sit-down interview at his palatial mansion in Surrey to talk about how he and other PR gurus covered up damaging stories about their clients.
But once their formal interview was over, Mr Atkins kept filming Clifford using a secret camera inside his shirt button.
During this exchange, he described how the ‘randy old sod’ who was ’76 going on 18 when it comes to young ladies’ was regularly groping his employees.
Clifford also implied that some of the girls Al Fayed groped had gone ‘looking for it’.
‘There’s an awful lot of young ladies that are extremely happy to pamper rich, randy old [men]’, he continued, describing how two girls of this age ‘knew full well when he offered them a job as a buyer, that that was what was involved. To me – no problems’.
Mr Atkins said he was unable to release the clip until now because ‘Britain’s arcane libel laws prevented us publishing the full unedited tape at the time’.
Writing in the , Mr Atkins said: ‘We first knew we had a problem when I screened the footage of Clifford’s incredible admissions to our lawyers.
‘Their faces went white, and they told us we would be insane to include these quotes in our film Starsuckers.
‘We didn’t have enough independent evidence to prove Al Fayed was guilty of these crimes, and in the inevitable libel case we would be crushed.’
Clifford tried to suppress the documentary with legal action but it was eventually released in 2009 with Al Fayed’s name bleeped out.
Mr Atkins spent the next few year trying to get the story in the press by sending it to several national newspapers.
He was also visited by officers from the Operation Yewtree investigation into the sex abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile and others. They tookthe clips as evidence to be used in a criminal case against Clifford.
Clifford himself was arrested for historic allegations of sexual assault against women and girls as young as 15. In April 2014 he was jailed for eight years but died after a heart attack in 2017.
The BBC documentary about Al Fayed was released just over a year after his death in August last year at the age of 94.
It spoke to female workers as young as 15 who were hand-picked from the shop floor by the sleazy billionaire to work as his personal assistants where they were groped, assaulted and raped.
Many of the women who began working directly for Fayed underwent medicals including invasive sexual health tests carried out by doctors. The results were sent directly to him.
Fayed – whose son Dodi was killed in a car crash alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 – has become known to a new generation through Netflix series of The Crown where he is presented as pleasant and gregarious. But his victims remember him as ‘vile’.
Security guards who protected Fayed would pass on stories of groping and non-consensual touching to other employees.
Tony Leeming, who was a manager from 1994 to 2004 said: ‘It was well known, everybody knew about it and it was laughed about. Looking back on it now it was pretty repellant and I was a part of it.
‘I was aware of the abuse against women when I was on the shop floor. And I think if I knew, everybody knew. Anyone who says they didn’t are lying, I’m sorry.
‘It was known around the whole company.’
The Egyptian-born tycoon – who died last August aged 94 – ran Harrods for 25 years from 1985 to 2010.
More than 20 former employees from that era came forward to tell the BBC Fayed sexually assaulted or raped them in Harrods’ offices, in his Park Lane apartment, at the Ritz hotel in Paris, which he also owned, or his nearby Villa Windsor property.
Five women alleged they had been raped by Mr Al Fayed.
After the publication of the investigation on Thursday, a woman who the BBC is calling Melanie came forward to say she had been subjected to a ‘sickening’ sexual assault by the Egyptian billionaire.
The woman worked at Harrods prior to 2010, and met Mr Al Fayed at work meetings on two occasions, before being summoned to his apartment, it was reported.
Melanie, who described the businessman as a ‘sleazebag’ and ‘slimy’, said: ‘He sat down next to me… He had asked that I return a couple of weeks later to stay at the apartments the night before the Harrods sale.
‘And he would not really let me leave until I agreed to that.
‘As I stood to leave, that’s when he put his hands on my breast and said some pretty disgusting things. And I was in complete shock. I just turned around and walked out.’
Melanie decided to go to the police in 2023, and said she was later told Scotland Yard planned to arrest Mr Al Fayed that year.
But he was too unwell to be questioned, and died in August 2023, the BBC reported.
Following the new allegation, Harrods’ current owners said they stood by a statement issued on Thursday which said they were ‘utterly appalled’ by the allegations of abuse.
The department store has also set up a page on its website inviting former employees to come forward if they have allegations.
To protect his image, Fayed fostered a culture of fear among workers at the posh Knightsbridge department store, with women scared to talk to each other believing their phones were tapped and they were being constantly watched by hidden cameras.
The ex-deputy director of security, Eamon Coyle, confirmed the shop was bugged and it was his job to listen to the tapes of recorded calls.
He said: ‘He bugged everybody that he wanted to bug.’
Fayed also used his immense wealth and power and a network of people around him who helped keep his criminality under wraps.
They included shamed PR guru Max Clifford, also a sex offender who died in jail.
Secretly recorded footage shows Clifford boasting about protecting his employer, who he called ‘a randy old sod’.
When victims did come forward he used cash payoffs and legally-binding non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to force their silence.
Among the women who spoke to the BBC was Gemma, who worked as one of Fayed’s personal assistants between 2007-09.
She says his ‘frightening’ behaviour culminated in her being raped during a trip to Paris.
After she was raped, she contacted a lawyer in 2009 who told Harrods she was leaving her job on the grounds of sexual harassment. Gemma did not feel able to disclose the full extent and seriousness of Fayed’s assaults at the time.
Harrods agreed she could leave and it would pay a sum of money in exchange for her shredding all evidence and signing an NDA. Gemma says a member of Harrods’ HR team was present as the shredding took place.
The programme also claims that women were threatened and intimidated by Harrods’ then-director of security, John Macnamara – who died in 2019 aged 83 – to stop them speaking out.
The ex-deputy director of security, Eamon Coyle, confirmed the shop was bugged and it was his job to listen to the tapes of recorded calls.
He said: ‘He bugged everybody that he wanted to bug.’
Fayed also used his immense wealth and power and a network of people around him who helped keep his criminality under wraps.
When victims did come forward he used cash payoffs and legally-binding non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to force their silence.
Among the women who spoke to the BBC was Gemma, who worked as one of Fayed’s personal assistants between 2007-09.
She says his ‘frightening’ behaviour culminated in her being raped during a trip to Paris.
After she was raped, she contacted a lawyer in 2009 who told Harrods she was leaving her job on the grounds of sexual harassment. Gemma did not feel able to disclose the full extent and seriousness of Fayed’s assaults at the time.
Harrods agreed she could leave and it would pay a sum of money in exchange for her shredding all evidence and signing an NDA. Gemma says a member of Harrods’ HR team was present as the shredding took place.
The BBC programme also claims that women were threatened and intimidated by Harrods’ then-director of security, John Macnamara – who died in 2019 aged 83 – to stop them speaking out.
There were a number of attempts by reporters to expose Fayed before his death – notably by Vanity Fair in 1995 which published an article alleging racism, staff surveillance and sexual misconduct.
Fayed sued for libel but two years later after the magazine gathered further evidence of his sexual misconduct to use at trial he agreed to drop the case as long as all the further evidence was locked away. Fayed’s settlement was negotiated by a senior Harrods executive.