What Prince Harry Remembers About Meeting Princess Diana’s ‘Friend,’ Dodi Fayed
Prince Harry reflected on all sorts of memories about his late mother, Princess Diana, in his 2023 Spare memoir. Between researching the car crash in which she died to their last phone conversation, the Duke of Sussex remembered what it was like meeting his mother’s new “friend,” Dodi Fayed, in 1997. Ahead, what Harry remembered about meeting Fayed.
Harry met Dodi while having a ‘grand time’ in St. Tropez with Diana and Prince William
The Duke of Sussex recalled meeting Fayed while on vacation in Spare. It was the summer of 1997 and Harry, alongside his brother Prince William, were in St. Tropez, France, with Diana. The trio stayed with Mohamed Al Fayed and his wife Heini Wathen-Feyed.
“We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa,” Harry wrote. “There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday.”
Harry, Diana, and William, along with the younger Fayed, were all photographed on the Fayed family’s yacht, then called the Jonikal.
“Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven,” Harry continued. “The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, [and] Mummy was smiling.”
Harry thought Dodi was a ‘nice enough bloke’ when they met
Thinking back to the summer of 1997 and the days before Diana, Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, died in a car crash, Harry shared what he remembered about meeting his mother’s new “friend.”
He recalled that he and his brother, the now-Prince of Wales, “had just met” Fayed not long before that fateful night in August 1997. So had Diana.
“We’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she met first met him, in St. Tropez,” Harry said before sharing what Fayed told him.
“Hello there, you must be Harry,” he recalled Fayed, a man with “raven hair,” a “leathery tan,” and a “bone-white smile,” saying. “How are you today? My name is … blah blah.”
All in all, Harry deemed Fayed a “nice enough bloke.”
Dodi’s eyes became ‘red hearts’ upon seeing Diana, according to Harry
Harry continued, sharing how Fayed reacted to meeting his mother. The Chariots of Fire movie producer Harry recalled “chatted up” not only him and William but Diana, too.
“He chatted us up, chatted Mummy up. Specifically Mummy. Pointedly Mummy,” Harry wrote, noting the 42-year-old’s eyes were “plumping into red hearts” at the sight of Diana. “He was cheeky, no doubt. But again, nice enough.”
Harry also said Fayed gave Diana a diamond bracelet as a “present,” which the late royal “seemed to like” because she “wore it a lot.”
“Then,” Harry admitted, the man “faded from” his “consciousness.” Though not before he exchanged a quick word about it with William. “As long as Mummy’s happy, I told Willy, who said he felt the same.”
Diana and Dodi met ‘briefly’ once before Harry, William introductions
A decade before Harry met the man he’d later recall relatives referring to as his mother’s “friend,” Diana and Fayed met at a 1987 polo match. In her book, The Diana Chronicles, royal author Tina Brown claimed that Fayed’s father introduced the two, a scene depicted in The Crown Season 5.
“Dodi was playing for the Harrods team,” the author wrote. “But Diana’s knowledge of Dodi was based on his father’s glowing reports.” Brown continued, quoting one of Diana’s “close friends,” who told her: “Diana saw Dodi through Mohamed Fayed’s words. She never cared to find out anything more.”
Aug. 31, 2023, marks the 26-year anniversary of Diana’s death and that of Fayed and Paul.
