LONDON — In his native Egypt, he is lionized for making billions and producing a son whose whirlwind romance with a princess fed dreams of a liaison between British royalty and Arab wealth.
The French government honored him with the Legion of Honor. The Italians gave him the Order of Merit.
In his adopted British homeland, where he has lived for 35 years, he has given generously to charity and spent lavishly on aristocratic trappings--a Scottish castle, a 500-acre country estate and the landmark Harrods department store.
But Britain has never opened its arms to Mohammed Fayed--or "Al Fayed," as he prefers to be known.
The flamboyant merchant, whose son Dodi died in the car crash that killed Princess Diana a year ago, is shunned by the royal family and much of the "establishment." The government has accused him of lying. He is regularly vilified in the popular press with such epithets as "morally and personally repugnant" and "ill-mannered self-seeker."
Still, Fayed remains on a quest for British citizenship, already once denied.
And he is determined to clear his name--to disprove a government report that he misrepresented his origins, wealth and business interests when he purchased a chain of stores that included the crown jewel of Harrods in 1985.
Over the last 15 years, the billionaire and his younger brother, Ali, have been buying British status symbols--Harrods; shirt makers Turnbull & Asser; the 150-year-old humor magazine Punch; the Fulham Football Club, a professional soccer team.
One thing he has not been able to buy is respect.
"Al Fayed is too flamboyant for the English, and he makes them nervous," says Harold Brooks-Baker, director of Burke's Peerage, a publishing company that specializes in the aristocracy.
"The English are not snobbish. They will receive anyone in society who acts as they think a human being should act. They don't care whether they're Arabs, Romanians, Jews, insurance salesman, grocers or actors. But they have to play by low-key rules that the English devise--and Al Fayed ignores those rules."
A man of many parts, Fayed is said to be exceedingly charming, devastatingly dismissive and decidedly autocratic.
He instituted a dress code at Harrods--even for customers--which he rigorously enforces during frequent walks around the store.
