His son Dodi's fateful relationship with princess Diana might have been the moment Fayed finally gained acceptance by the British "Establishment" elite.
Instead it marked his permanent estrangement after he insisted – without evidence – that Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip had ordered the Paris car crash in which Diana and Dodi were killed to prevent her marrying a Muslim.
Fayed lived most of his life in Britain, where for decades he was never far from the headlines.
But to his frustration he was never granted UK citizenship nor admitted into the upper echelons of British society.
aFayed will be remembered most for his outspoken and often foul-mouthed manner, his revenge on the Conservative party, his controversial purchase of the Harrods department store, and his ownership of Fulham football club and the Ritz hotel in Paris.
Al Fayed owned the Harrods department store in west London. © Carl De Souza, AFP
With a business empire encompassing shipping, property, banking, oil, retail and construction, Fayed was also a philanthropist, whose foundation helped children in the UK, Thailand and Mongolia.
His gift for self-invention – he added the "Al-" prefix to his surname and a 1988 UK government report described his claims of wealthy ancestry as "completely bogus" – led segments of the British press to dub him the "Phoney Pharoah."
Far from being the scion of a dynasty of cotton and shipping barons he made himself out to be, Fayed was the son of a poor Alexandrian school-teacher who, after an early venture flogging lemonade, set out in business selling sewing machines.
He later had the good luck to start working for the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who recognised his business abilities and employed him in his furniture export business in Saudi Arabia.
He also owned the Ritz hotel in Paris, from where Diana and Dodi made their fateful final journey. © Jacques Demarthon, AFP
He became an advisor to the Sultan of Brunei in the mid-1960s and moved to Britain in the 1970s.
Fayed bought the Ritz in 1979 with his brother and the pair snapped up Harrods six years later after a long and bitter takeover battle with British businessman Roland "Tiny" Rowland.
A subsequent government investigation into the takeover, officially published in 1990, found that Fayed and his brother had been dishonest about their wealth and origins to secure the takeover.
They called the claims unfair. Five years later, his first application for British citizenship was rejected.
Revenge followed swiftly. Soon after, Fayed told the press that he had paid Conservative MPs to ask questions in parliament on his behalf.
This brought down two prominent politicians, while Fayed also exposed Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken's involvement in a Saudi arms deal.
Aitken was later jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
The defining tragedy of Fayed's life came in August 1997: Dodi and Princess Diana died when a car driven by one of Fayed's employees, chauffeur Henri Paul, crashed in a Paris road tunnel.
For years afterwards, Fayed refused to accept the deaths were the result of speeding and intoxication by Paul, who also died.
Dodi's death in the tragedy was largely eclipsed by Diana's. © Mohammed Al-Sehiti, AFP
The distraught Fayed accused the royal family of being behind the deaths and commissioned two memorials to the couple at Harrods.
One, unveiled in 1998, was a kitsch pyramid-shaped display with photos of Diana and Dodi, a wine glass purported to be from their final dinner and a ring that he claimed his son bought for the princess.
The other, a copper statue of the couple releasing an albatross, was entitled "Innocent Victims" – a reflection of his view that Dodi and Diana "were murdered".
Fayed's claims against the royal family came at a price.
Harrods lost a royal warrant bestowed by Prince Philip in 2000 after what Buckingham Palace called "a significant decline in the trading relationship" between the prince and the store.
Al-Fayed commissioned two memorials to the couple, insisting they were going to be married © John D. McHugh, AFP
Later that year, Fayed ordered the removal of all remaining royal warrants – effectively a regal seal of approval – for supplying the queen, queen mother and Prince Charles, the now King Charles III.
The Establishment "dislike my outspokenness and determination to get the truth", he said, as he announced his exile to Switzerland in 2003 because of his claims and what he said was the "unfair" treatment at the hands of the tax authorities.
Fayed sold Harrods in 2010 to the investment arm of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund for a reported £1.5 billion ($2.2 billion), although it was once reported he wanted to remain there even in death.
He told the Financial Times in 2002 that he wanted his body to be put on display in a glass mausoleum on Harrods roof "so people can come and visit me".
Despite his paranoia, secrecy and eccentricities, Fayed's success with the prestige department store was undeniable.
Al Fayed bought Fulham Football Club and commissioned a statue of pop star Michael Jackson for outside its ground. © Glyn Kirk, AFP
Within a decade of his taking over, sales increased by 50 percent and profits rose from £16 million to £62 million.
Other successes included at Fulham, which he transformed from a struggling outfit into an top-flight side. But even here he was ridiculed and he eventually sold up.
He claimed in 2014 they were relegated because a giant statue he had commissioned of Michael Jackson outside the ground was removed.
Critics, he said characteristically, "can go to hell".
According to Forbes list of the world's billionaires, Fayed was worth $1.9 billion in November 2022.
"We are living in difficult times," the 39-year-old driver said.
"All sorts of things are happening and can happen."
Nineteen months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his troops in Ukraine, drones now hit Moscow almost daily.
The conflict has spilled to schools, with a new program designed to instil the Kremlin's version of events in Ukraine to younger generations.
Since the beginning of the offensive Russia had already introduced patriotic lectures called "Important Conversations".
For the start of the new school year, Putin taught the flagship lecture in front of 30 teenagers selected for their academic achievements.
Russian schools are introducing primary military training reminiscent of Soviet times © Alexander NEMENOV / AFP
"We were absolutely invincible" during World War II, Putin said, "and we are the same now."
The Russian leader also opened a new school via video-call in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was razed to the ground last spring before being seized by the Russian army.
Moscow-installed officials, who since the city's capture have undertaken to erase Ukrainian symbols from public spaces, rolled out a long Russian flag across the centre of the city.
Russian children's updated school program includes basic military training, reviving a Soviet-era subject that had long been abandoned.
Teachers are also to use a new history textbook praising the offensive, written under the curation of Putin's hardliner ally Vladimir Medinsky.
More than 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) eastwards in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, local history teacher Tatiana Barabanova applauded the course book, whose cover features Putin's flagship bridge linking annexed Crimea to Russia's mainland.
"Young people are disorientated by various mass fakes slandering our country," she said, using terms reminiscent of Putin's speeches.
A new history textbook meant to instill the Kremlin's version of the conflict in Ukraine to schoolchildren is introduced in Russian schools from this year © Alexander NEMENOV / AFP
"In this new textbook, there are very clear examples of courage and heroism," she said.
The book praises Russia's assault on Ukraine and features sections explaining Moscow was "saving peace" in 2014 when it annexed Crimea.
Her colleague, first aid and sports teacher Yelena Sobachkina, meanwhile showed off gas masks and plastic hands with fake wounds that will be used in the new primary military preparation courses.
"They will understand what military service is like," Sobachkina said, adding it was aimed at 15- to 18-year -olds.
She said the school would also introduce the teens to "tactical training and theoretical training of combat drones."
Sobachkina plans to bring soldiers from the Ukraine front to speak to her students.
Sergei Varalov welcomed the prospect of seeing his child getting more teaching on the conflict in Ukraine.
"The political situation is such that the whole world has collapsed on us," the 55-year-old builder said.
He also expressed support for military trainings and increased patriotic education.
Under Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has increasingly sought to control Russia's historical narrative © Alexander NEMENOV / AFP
"We need to prepare (the children)," he said, while clarifying, "I am not saying that it should be like North Korea."
Back in Moscow, 83-year-old Nina Ivanova, watched her grandson start his new job as a teacher.
The pensioner hoped the job would "relieve him from the army" in the event that Russia would introduce another mobilisation.
In the crowd, painter Irina Dobrokhotova, just back from annexed-Crimea, was dropping her son Daniil to school.
"There are reasons for concerns... You just need to be prepared for anything and not be afraid," Dobrokhotova said.
But she added: "Everyone is hoping for the best".
© 2023 AFP
But the Freedom Party's hardline leader Herbert Kickl sprang to its defence, calling the video "great".
"I criticise the whole pseudo furore," he said, insisting that the video, on the party's official YouTube channel, showed "young people... with a positive approach to their homeland and nature."
The video shows the party's youth wing taking part in torchlight processions and standing below the Vienna balcony where Adolf Hitler gave his iconic speech when he returned to his homeland in triumph after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938.
Austria's conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer led the criticism, saying the video "is meant to scare and is playing with images we know from the past".
Sigrid Maurer, a leader of the Greens, the junior partner in the country's ruling coalition, condemned its "Nazi imagery" and the video's singling out of journalists as "enemies of the state".
With the Freedom Party (FPOe) -- whose founding leader was a former SS officer -- high in the polls, observers say the video may signal a new radical shift in contrast to other far-right European parties that have been toning down their rhetoric to court mainstream voters.
The party has been part of coalition governments several times, the last of which collapsed in scandal in 2019 when its then leader was filmed asking for money from a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece in exchange for public contracts.
"Under former party leaders, the FPOe set itself apart" from the extreme right, political scientist Peter Filzmaier told AFP, who said the video evoked "memories of the darkest times in Austrian history and right-wing extremism.
Freedom Party leader Herbert has revived support for the far right party © Alex HALADA / AFP
"The video is frightening because parts of the FPOe youth wing obviously think like the extremist Identitarian movement, which is under surveillance by Austria's domestic intelligence agency (DSN)," he added.
The video has been reported to prosecutors with the DSN also investigating, according to media reports.
Contacted by AFP, the DSN said it is "monitoring various persons and groups likely to be involved in extremist and anti-constitutional activities" but was unable to provide information about "possible investigations".
The FPOe has seen its support soar to around 30 percent in the latest polls -- up from 16 percent in 2019 -- buoyed by discontent over inflation, migration and the war in Ukraine.
It is already part of coalitions ruling three Austrian provinces, with the opposition Social Democrats and the conservatives lagging behind it in national polls.
"The FPOe feels reassured by its lead in the polls when it comes to Kickl's hardline course," said researcher Bernhard Weidinger of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, which monitors neo-Nazism.
"What is new is the accumulation of open references to the extreme right -- from the basic narrative... to the aesthetics," said Weidinger.
"Hardly any other party in Europe on the verge of an election victory and possible participation in government sends out signals in such a brazen manner to the fringes of the right," he added.
Japanese writer Yukio Mishima before he killed himself after a failed coup attempt in 1970 © AFP / JIJI PRESS/AFP
The controversial youth wing video, which went online on Sunday, blamed Europe's politicians for "mass migration, wokeism, rainbow (LGBTQ) terror and Islamization".
With images of ranks of soldiers and people in traditional Alpine costumes, it presents the FPOe as "Austria's last chance" to "resist the left-liberal indoctrination" and "turn things around".
It also features images of fascist guru figures, including the French Nazi collaborator Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Japanese nationalist Yukio Mishima as well as Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar.
Austria -- which the Nazis annexed in 1938 -- has some of the world's strictest laws against Holocaust denial and pro-Nazi activities.
Despite this, convictions are rare.
© 2023 AFP
