Mohamed al Fayed sells his retail Mecca for £1.5bn

Only a few weeks ago Mohamed al Fayed, the 'Phoney Pharaoh', vowed he would never sell Harrods. Now he's done a £1.5bn deal to sell the store to the Qatari royal family.

Mohamed al Fayed loved Harrods so much that he planned to be buried there, mummified in a golden sarcophagus in a glass pyramid on the roof. Sadly, the £1.5bn sale of the store to the Qatari royal family will deprive us of that spectacle, says The Sunday Times. Yet only a few weeks ago, "the Phoney Pharaoh" vowed he would never sell his retail "Mecca", despite the many tempting offers dangled by would-be buyers. "I put two fingers up to them all," he declared.

The sale brings to an end one of the most colourful chapters in British business history, says The Observer. During his quarter century at Harrods, Fayed waged war on an establishment that had turned its back on him. Ever the showman (see below), he played every role from grieving father to "foul-mouthed hectoring bully". At first, the tragi-comic battle centred on Fayed's obsession with gaining a British passport. When thwarted, he proved "a formidable taker of Tory scalps", boasting that his exposure of corrupt ministers Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith and later Jonathan Aitken was instrumental in bringing down the Major government.

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