Dodi Fayed was always ”paranoid” about being kidnapped.
The film producer died aged 47 alongside his then-girlfriend Princess Diana in a car accident in Paris in 1997 and family friend Paul Anka admits he wasn’t surprised because his pal always insisted his vehicles were driven quickly because he was so worried about ”vendettas”.
Paul said: ”That hair-raising drive through Paris made sense, when I thought about it.
”One of Dodi’s problems was that he was very paranoid. And he was especially paranoid about kidnapping, hold-ups and vendettas, always thinking that someone might want to kill him.
”That’s why he always went fast whenever he got into a car.
When he got involved with Princess Di, all that anxiety must have increased exponentially because the paparazzi were on their tracks, day and night. It was always about speed with him. Fast, fast, fast.”
And Paul – who is best known for writing Frank Sinatra’s hit ‘My Way’ – blamed himself for the pair’s deaths for a long time as his intervention after Dodi hit money problems and racked up a string of debts convinced the playboy to change his lifestyle when his father, millionaire Mohammed al Fayed, had ordered him to move from Los Angeles back to England, where he eventually met Diana.
In an extract from his autobiography ‘My Way’ – which is being serialised by the Daily Mail newspaper – he said: ”Then I started wondering: what if I hadn’t loaned Dodi the money? What if I hadn’t called Fayed? Would Dodi have stayed in LA? Would he – and Princess Diana – still be alive today? I drove myself crazy with that for quite a while.”