Marina Hyde: Behind every Al Fayed or Diddy, there is a small army of enablers

‘Entourage’ is too wan a word for this motley crew of enforcers, concealers, NDA experts and crisis PRs

Since the BBC documentary based on the testimony of 20 women against Mohamed al Fayed aired, another 100 approaches have been made to the legal team who were already representing 37 women, and it is safe to assume there are many still too traumatised to make that call.

I’m afraid I shrieked when I read that Michael Cole — long-term publicist for the late former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed — cannot come to the phone these days. 

If you covered a certain phase of British public life, you would know that Michael Cole could always come to the phone. Coming to the phone was what Michael Cole did, always to emit some hugely pompous shitblast in defence of his master, who is now the subject of multiple rape and sexual assault allegations.