I dated Dodi Al-Fayed at the same time as Princess Diana – I know the real reason they fell in love, says Annie Cardone
ONE of Dodi Fayed’s former lovers has told how she ditched him when she feared he was cheating on her with Princess Diana – and now agonises over whether her move played a role in their deaths.
Ex-model Annie Cardone said: “One decision I made in that moment, in early summer 1997, right before they went public . . .
“If I’d given him another chance, would things have been different? Would history have changed?
“That’s a burden of responsibility that I feel I have.”
She added: “When I last saw him, he was begging for another chance. He was crying. He was sobbing.
“He was telling me he loved me and it was incredibly hard to see him like that. I still get choked about it.”
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In her first ever full chat, Annie told The Sun about her life with Dodi, whose death aged 42 in a Paris car crash with Diana came just months after he and Annie split up.
Now 57 and living in Canterbury, Kent, she recalled: “He was incredibly tactile, loving and sweet. It was very passionate and intense.”
Annie claimed there was “definitely an overlap” with her and Diana dating playboy Dodi, who was known for his wild living and womanising.
She admitted she was initially “annoyed” when she discovered he was dating Diana — who she believes knew nothing about her — but said she is now pleased she was able to experience Dodi’s devoted love.
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Of Diana, she said: “We were both very, very lucky to have been on the receiving end of that. Not many women were.”
Cocaine brick
Annie, now an author whose latest book is Menopause WTH!, spoke to The Sun ahead of Channel 5 documentary, Dodi: Last Days Of A Playboy.
The programme, in which she features, lifts the lid on Dodi’s life, from his early days in his native Egypt, to dealing with his parents’ divorce at a young age, building a career in Hollywood as a film producer and going on to date the most famous woman in the world.
Five-times-married Annie, who was scouted as a model in her early 20s, said she met Dodi in the summer of 1996 at London’s most decadent late-night haunt, Tramp nightclub.
Annie, who by then had quit modelling for public relations, recalled how he asked her friend if she would dance with him but she declined.
She said: “It was midnight and I didn’t want to be there.”
But Dodi overheard her reply and Annie said: “I remember his little face. It’s like someone had sold his dog. I felt bad for him.”
And she had a change of heart when her favourite song, Gangsta’s Paradise by rapper Coolio, started playing.
Annie recalled: “Dodi had moves. He surprised me because he looked like a wet blanket.”
She added: “He wasn’t a great conversationalist or raconteur. He was very shy.”
The first night she stayed at Dodi’s Park Lane apartment felt like a scene from the film An Officer And A Gentleman, according to Annie.
Dodi — who had attended Sandhurst, the British Army’s top officer training academy — had filled it with “beautiful military uniforms” and he held her hand as she walked down the stairs.
As the son of billionaire former Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed, Dodi had private jets and yachts at his disposal.
In the current series of Netflix drama The Crown, Dodi is seen snorting cocaine and making love to his latest girlfriend on a private jet paid for by his dad, but Annie said the reality was far less glamorous for her.
She recalls: “We would go to Harry’s Bar, he’d have the truffles, then we’d go to Tramp and go back to his place with a bunch of losers.
“I’d try and get an early night because I had to get up in the morning.
“He’d come to bed a bit later.
“We’d have a bit of hanky panky for a few hours. I’d get up at 6am and have to borrow one of his Ralph Lauren polo sweaters to wear on the walk of shame to work.”
She added sarcastically: “So yeah, it was really glamorous.”
Annie was a fan of the hit Netflix series but stopped watching before it focused on her ex’s famous relationship with Princess Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki.
She said: “I don’t trust The Crown to have done an accurate portrayal and it’ll just annoy me.”
Annie said she decided to break off her romance with Dodi, which lasted almost a year, because she had a hunch there was another woman.
She said she first suspected something was up when a trip they had planned to the US for Christmas 1996 with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore — who film producer Dodi worked with on the 1995 movie The Scarlet Letter — was cancelled.
Annie said: “We had plans to go to Colorado to spend time with Bruce and Demi. We were all set to go and we were both excited about it.
Absolutely destroyed
“The trip didn’t happen and we had words about it.”
She recalled how Dodi suddenly “changed” and “went quiet”. She added: “Obviously I knew. You can read the temperature.”
Dodi had first met Diana at a polo match in 1989, but they did not get together until his dad invited her to stay at his mansion in St Tropez in July 1997. Annie said she discovered her ex was dating Diana when she saw the pictures of them in the luxurious resort on the French Riviera — including the famous “kiss” photo.
But she believes they got together “quite a long time” before things were made public.
When she heard the news she admitted: “I was a little annoyed.”
As well as Annie, the new film hears from those closest to Dodi including British former Royal Military Police officer Lee Sansum, one of the Fayed family’s personal bodyguards, and Dodi’s personal butler of seven years, René Delorm, who lived with him and travelled the world with him.
Peter Riva, who knew Dodi from his time at an elite Swiss boarding school, also claims in the documentary he once saw Dodi carrying a “brick” of cocaine at the notorious Studio 54 nightclub in New York.
When the news came out that the Princess was dating Dodi, Annie said his wild past led her to predict a bad outcome for the relationship.
She said: “There was a sense of foreboding. I knew he was going to get crucified. Everyone she was with was going to get absolutely destroyed.
“He had a lot to hide, unfortunately. I had this real fear. And I just actually said to a friend, ‘This is not going to end well’.”
In the 90s, well-connected Annie lived a jet-set lifestyle. She was pals with the late socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and former Miss UK Kirsty Bertarelli, who last year became Britain’s richest divorcee with a £400million settlement after splitting from her billionaire husband, Swiss biotech tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli.
Annie said: “I think I was the only one of my friends who wasn’t a Trust Fund kid. I was the only one having to get up at 6am and go to work.”
And she said ditching Dodi was a “turning point” in her life.
Annie said: “I wasn’t at all in the spotlight, but a lot of my friends like Tara Palmer-Tomkinson were, and I saw them spiralling out of control.”
She added: “It was a turning point to leave behind a lifestyle that I wasn’t enjoying. And I made the decision to live a calmer and peaceful, quieter life.”
Single Annie — who was once married to entrepreneur Gary Cardone, whose brother Grant was in US reality TV series Undercover Billionaire — said she and Dodi were not a great match — but he and Diana were.
After seeing the CCTV footage of the pair in the lift at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on that fateful night in August 1997 just before they were killed, she said she could see he was “absolutely besotted” with Diana.
While he was alive, divorced Dodi — who was married to model Suzanne Gregard for eight months in the 1980s — reportedly dated a string of famous models and actresses, including Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields and Winona Ryder.
American model Kelly Fisher was reportedly engaged to Dodi before Diana. When paparazzi photographs revealed the Princess looking cosy with Dodi on a yacht, Kelly was so outraged she sued her fiance.
Despite his playboy reputation, Annie insisted he would have stayed faithful to Diana, had they both lived.
Annie, who also runs a dog rescue Facebook group, said: “I think they would have had children, had a family, because their goals and purposes were aligned.
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“I do believe, if there was The One, then Diana was his one.”
- Dodi: Last Days Of A Playboy is on Channel 5 Wednesday at 9pm.
