LONDON, February 10: The woman who claims she and Dodi Al-Fayed had a secret love child bombarded his father with letters explaining how she won herson's heart despite being "too old, too fat and too ugly", The Sun reported today.In one letter, from which The Sun published an excerpt, Diane Holliday, 36, attempted to convince Mohamed Al-Fayed of her and Dodi's relationship by saying he had found in her someone to talk to. Holliday refers to a meeting she had with the Egyptian billionaire: "You spoke the truth, Al Fayed, when you said I wasn't Dodi's type -- too old, too fat and too ugly. Hurtful but true."
"I certainly wasn't under any illusion about myself. I knew Dodi could and did have the most beautiful women in the world."
"He found in me somebody he could talk to. I wasn't interested in fame and fortune. He told me this that I know he would never admit to anyone else."In another letter, also reprinted by The Sun, she insisted, "I'm not a nutter or a gold digger."
Holliday,a British travel consultant, in her first public interview told The Mirror yesterday that her daughter, Marni, had been adopted shortly after birth in a private US clinic in November 1996.
She said she only informed Dodi about the child in July last year, a month before he was killed along with Diana, Princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash.
In a later interview, with London's Evening Standard, Holliday said the child was the result of an affair that began before Dodi began courting Diana. And Holliday also claimed Dodi's father, owner of London's Harrods store and the Ritz Hotel in Paris, organised a DNA test to prove paternity and is aware of the results.
"Dodi was Marni's father. I have a DNA test to prove it and Mohamed Al-Fayed knows this full well. Mohamed organised the test," she said.
"I don't want money from him or anyone else, but they cannot deny she was Dodi's child. What do I have to gain by doing this if it isn't true. Dodi and I were close for about five months and Marniis the result".
But a spokesman for Al-Fayed told the Daily Telegraph that Holliday had never had a DNA test.
Meanwhile, the British royal family wants the French criminal investigation into the death of Princess Diana brought to a swift conclusion to allow an inquest to take place in Britain, The Times reported today.
It said Buckingham Palace's concerns had been heightened by the suggestion in a book published by two US journalists that Diana might have survived had she been driven straight to hospital from the accident scene.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
