Director Peter Morgan’s lavish royal drama repeatedly implies that the relationship was engineered by Al-Fayed, the late Egyptian business mogul, as part of his ambition to obtain British citizenship. However, this is a distortion of historical facts as this allegation was refuted back in 1997.

Michael Cole, who is the former spokesperson for Al-Fayed has gone on record to time and again deny that his ex-boss was involved in Diana and Dodi’s fateful romance, or had any role in it for that matter.

Speaking to Deadline, Cole revealed that he never once witnessed or had any knowledge of Al-Fayed engineering the relationship, or playing a role in making the tryst known to the entire world by commissioning photos of the couple.

“Netflix and the production company describe 'The Crown' as ‘dramatised fiction’ and I am not going to disagree with that characterisation. That means it is made up,” he said.

Cole said that the very suggestion of Al-Fayed being involved in the relationship was “total nonsense.” He added: “Mohamed was a remarkable man in many ways. He was delighted that his eldest son and his family’s dear friend Diana were together. But making two people fall in love with each other? That was beyond even his great talents.”

As Al-Fayed died in August at the age of 94, Cole also quipped that his former boss, who was known for speaking his mind and was curt and blunt in his way of speaking, would have had “quite a lot to say” about ‘The Crown’ and its depiction of various events in the name of creative liberty. IANS/KB