THE CROWN’S DIANA & DODI DEPICTION ‘ROYALLY WRONG’

The Crown’s come under fresh fire by a former friend of the late loved-up couple, who has labelled episodes of Netflix’s new smash-hit series as a ‘travesty of the truth’. Michael Cole, head of PR for Dodi Fayed’s father, former Harrods’ honcho and magnate Mohamed Al Fayed, said The Crown is ‘a travesty’ and the new series gets ‘so much wrong’, fumes the former Harrods spokesperson and friend of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. The sensational show’s come under fresh fire from former BBC Royal Correspondent Michael who claims he’s one of the only people still alive who knew all three people who were killed in the infamous car crash, slamming the show for “cruel” and “malicious” scenes watched worldwide. He firstly insists Dodi Fayed was not ‘pushed’ into a relationship with the Princess by his father, as perceived in the current series, which makes out Mohamed ‘engineered’ their romance, with Michael telling The Sun, “It was quite the reverse,” and the ill-fated pair were happy and very much in love. “Dodi adored Diana. It’s injurious, it’s nasty, it’s untrue. And Diana was happy with Dodi. I’m quite sure that she was sincere about the relationship.” A main point of contention is the delineation of Diana’s snapped kiss with Dodi on a yacht, which was front-page news across the world, with the plotline making out it was set up by Mohamed in the Harrods owner’s quest for British citizenship. “When the photograph came out, I was with Dodi and Mohamed and they were devastated, because up until then, we’d kept it under wraps,” Michael discloses. “Far from conspiring to bring about this photograph, Mohamed then actually sued the agent who sold it.” In another ‘false’ portrayal, Michael blasts scenes showing Mohamed badgering his son to move things along faster with The Princess, revealing how he actually told his son to take things slower, “literally the opposite of The Crown.” In the hit series, Princess Diana and Dodi’s night in Paris is portrayed as almost an inconvenient stopover on the way home, specifically so Dodi could propose to her at his ‘puppet master’ father’s request. However, Michael claims that “was utterly untrue,” too. “It’s ridiculous.” He reveals the pair took secret incognito trips together abroad away from the cameras, and alleges they opted to travel to Paris together on a separate occasion before that fateful 1997 night. “Diana and Dodi had gone to Paris on a quiet weekend that nobody knew about before they holidayed on the boat. And until that photograph was published, nobody knew. Dodi wanted to protect her.”