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(Continued from overleaf)
Gregorio Martin's contribution passed unremarked in the tide of critical abuse that engulfed the programme after it was shown. However, while researching my book, Diana: The Last Days, I established that Martin's account of the tour was a complete fiction: he had not been in Paris on Diana and Dodi's last day. In fact, Martin had not even been in France at the time: he had been on holiday in Spain. He was parroting to ITV a post-crash script that rayed started to write in the Mirror in February 1998. In a world-exclusive interview Fayed told the paper, 'They went to see the house, and saw the Italian designer. He was waiting when they arrived, and they discussed their plans. The designer had already drawn up plans for some of the apartments.'
During his ITV interview the parrot forgot his lines while Nicholas Owen was interviewing him. Martin couldn't remember the name of the Italian designer Fayed had told him to inform ITV about. An eyewitness to this embarrassing turn of events was head of Villa Windsor security, Ben Murrell, who has now left Fayed's staff. He told me, 'When Martin came to speak for the camera he couldn't remember the name he had been told. I rang Mohamed in London and was put through to his office. I told them what had happened. I spoke to one of the heads of security, David Pinch, and I heard him speaking to Mohamed. I was given the name Andro Grossi, which I repeated to Martin.'
Ben Murrell, who supervised the couple's tour and was seen admitting Owen to the villa in the ITV film, later asked Martin why he had been prepared to lie, 'He said to me, "What can I do? Mohamed wants me to say it." '
Another curious feature of the ITV sequence with Martin was that it showed the Villa Windsor full of what appeared to be the Duke and Duchess's furniture, decorations and paintings. The famous 1939 Gerald Brockhurst painting of the Duchess was hanging in the fireplace in the main room as it had done when the former King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson lived there. This was strange, as the entire contents of the villa, including the painting, had been sold in Sotheby's epic auction in New York in February 1998. Brockhurst's painting of the Duchess had been sold for £65,000.
ITV's viewers were being doubly misled in June 1998. Not only was Gregorio Martin absent from the villa when Diana and Dodi paid their visit on 30 August 1997; the fixtures and fittings had not been there either. Craftsmen employed by Fayed had copied many of the villa's key items. Nick Owen and Gregorio Martin were showing viewers around a house which had been filled entirely by replicas of some of the original furniture, decorations and paintings, including the Brockhurst.
The television sequence was to create an illusion about Diana, Princess of Wales's last day alive that Fayed hoped would live in the minds of the millions who were watching, and would foster the myth that she was planning a future with his son. Fayed had created an illusion about her happiness, and a fantasy about what she did on her last day, whom she met and what her future plans might have been.
Such activity should not be discounted as simply the distraught reaction of a bereaved father; it was an integral part of Fayed's post-crash strategy designed to impute motive to what he describes as the British establishment's intention to murder the couple. An article that appeared under Fayed's name in the Sunday Times the following week demonstrates the point: 'Imagine the situation: Diana and Dodi get married. They have two beautiful children. They spend their time between Malibu, Paris and London. The world still beats a path to Diana's door. Their glamour, looks and radiant happiness make a striking contrast with the House of Windsor….'
In reality, Diana was not intending to marry Dodi, and she was certainly not engaged to him or pregnant by him when she died. The ring that Dodi picked up from Alberto Repossi's shop in Paris on the night he died was not an engagement ring, according to the jeweller himself, and it had not even been presented to the Princess. Fayed's staff found it in the family apartment after the crash, still in its box. Fayed himself picked up the bill. He has now placed in Harrods the ring that Diana had not accepted when she died as part of a tasteless and historically inaccurate memorial to the couple, which describes Repossi's creation as an engagement ring.
Shortly after her brief visit, the Princess actually described the Windsors' former Paris home as being full of ghosts. The ITV sequence in the Villa Windsor with Gregorio Martin bore no relation to anything that Diana saw or did during her visit -she had briefly toured the empty shell of the villa. According to Ben Murrell who watched Diana and Dodi's visit on a closed-circuit television, the bare villa contained virtually nothing for the Princess to see: most of the antiques had been packed away ready to be auctioned off in New York. There was 'nothing much to look at -just a few animal skins that had not been packed away'.
After Diana: Secrets Behind the Crash, Fayed could add ITV's pelt to his collection. It looks increasingly likely, however, that those royal coats of arms will vanish from the wall of Harrods. Fayed will always deserve sympathy as a man who has lost his son. But his fantastic lies since the crash will cost him the compassion of many, if and when he faces the legal consequences of an accident for which his company was at least partly responsible.
Martyn Gregory is the author of Diana: The Last Days, published this week in paperback by Virgin (£6.99).
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