Mohamed Al-Fayed with Sidney Johnson, former valet of the Duke of Windsor, in 1989 – Shutterstock
In the third episode of the fifth series of The Crown, the royal family, the Mau Mau, once again play a supporting role. Instead, the emphasis is on three individuals who have played their part in the monarchy’s fortunes over the past decades. The first and main focus of the episode is Mohamed Al-Fayed, an Egyptian businessman and former owner of Harrods department store, who died on August 30, 2023, at the age of 94.
The other is her son Dodi, Princess Diana’s last lover and the second victim of history’s most famous car crash. And the third is a less familiar name, Sidney Johnson: the man who served as valet to both Fayed and, before that, the Duke of Windsor.
Written as always by Peter Morgan, Mau Mau begins in 1946 Alexandria. The young Fayed, then only Mohamed Fayed, is a teenage entrepreneur, nicknamed ‘Mau Mau’, who is introduced to playing football outside the British Consulate. As he does so, an impeccably dressed young black man opens the car door and lets out an older couple: the Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, once again Alex Jennings and Lia Williams Role played by He waves to the crowd before entering the consulate and Fayed is impressed by his glamour.
The remainder of the episode shows Fayed first embracing his new identity as Mohammed al-Fayed, a man who can buy the Ritz Hotel in Paris without blinking, and secondly making his way into English aristocratic and royal society. trying to make. For this Pygmalion-esque transformation he enlists the aid of Johnson, who is presented as a man who understands everything there is to know about both manners and royalty, having learned it all from his mentor.
A sort of bromance develops between the two. The night Chariots of Fire, financed by Allied Stars, won the Best Picture award at the Oscars, we watched overjoyed Fayed hug and kiss Johnson. Like many episodes of The Crown, it makes for an impressive, revelatory story.
But how much of it is Morgan’s invention? When it comes to Sidney Johnson, the facts are incomparable. It is known that he entered the service of the Duke of Windsor when he was 16, when the Duke became Governor-General of the Bahamas in 1940, and continued to serve him until his death in 1972.
Except for Wallis, it was rare for the Duke to show much affection or loyalty to anyone in his life, but the enduring relationship between the two men indicates that Johnson was completely attuned to the Duke’s often capricious moods and requirements. Given that, like many people of his class and background, Duke was casually racist—his letters from that period were liberally strewn with derogatory racial epithets and contemptuous dismissals of the Bahamians whom he was ruling—it became even more surprising.
At the Mau Mau, the Duke is given a speech in which he justifies his reasons for keeping Wallis in his service. ‘I have grown very fond of him. When I first got engaged to him, I was skeptical. I thought his presence might be an unwanted reminder of our time in the Bahamas – our exile from England, our expulsion from home… but I am impressed by his work… I’ll ask our crazy friend if he wants a job It is a permanent basis.
In fact, the Duke was so impressed with Johnson that in May 1954 Jet magazine offered him ‘a great piece of real estate’ in the Bahamas on which to build a house: a rare act of generosity from a man who had endless . Selfless to his wife and notoriously selfish to everyone else.
The Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis Simpson in the garden of the Villa Windsor near Paris – Frank Shershall/The Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
However, it’s unclear how much use or enjoyment Johnson got from his Bahamas home. By 1954 he was living in Paris with his mistress and the Duchess in a grand villa on the Bois de Boulogne, which was leased by the French authorities for a modest $28 a year. Edward and Wallis bought the house in 1952 and lived there for the next two decades. Johnson was head-domo at countless society parties, with guests including everyone from Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor to the Aga Khan and Aristotle Onassis, and, in a 1986 interview with the New York Times, he reminisced about some Why? The experiences he had at home.
Johnson, whom the newspaper described as ‘the foremost treasure of all Windsoriana’, recalled how, at Christmas, ‘he was always alone, with just us, the staff and our families. Even the dogs would be running here and there to get the gifts.’
They also recalled how, despite the duke’s poor relationship with his father, George V, there was one item of clothing he had inherited that had enormous sentimental value – a long beaver-line with an astrakhan collar. Wala overcoat. ‘He used to wear the same one every winter, I knew him. Her Royal Highness used to say, ‘David, fashion is short this year; You must cut off that coat.’ But he used to say: ‘No, it was my father’s. I am not going to cut it short. After the Duchess’s death, Johnson searched the house for the coat, and eventually found it in her wardrobe: she had kept it with her the whole time.
Sidney Johnson with Joan Collins at Villa Windsor in 1989 – shutterstock
Johnson was dismissed from Windsor’s service in 1973, a year after his boss’s death. His own wife had died and he had asked Wallis for permission to leave work every day at 4 pm in order to be able to care for their four children. But the request was denied; She said ‘I never want to see you again.’ The usually taciturn and loyal Johnson replied ‘I have four children. Let me take care of my four children. And you take care of your four dogs.’
When the Duchess died in 1986, the house had already fallen into disrepair, as she was unable to care for it due to a stroke and dementia being bedridden, and the priceless antiques and furniture she had acquired , they were damaged by the pugs. The couple owned it.
Under normal circumstances, the house would have returned to its owners, but Fayed, who had by now reestablished himself as an accomplished Anglophile, not only took over the lease of the property – but, in 1977, employed Johnson After hiring, hired him. To restore what he called ‘Villa Windsor’ to its former glory. As he said in 1986, ‘Sydney is a dictionary…he is a very cultured man. He obtained all these things from boxes, safes and storage rooms, and he knows their history.’
Crown is compassionate and clear-sighted about profit. This doesn’t shy away from suggestions that his wealth was acquired through questionable means, and it’s telling that, when he first saw Johnson serving drinks at an upmarket society party at the Ritz following the death of the Duke of Windsor and afterwards Was. After being made redundant from his role as valet, his first instinct is to ask Dodie to fire him, for implicitly racist reasons. Yet when Fayed learns of Johnson’s previous job, he quickly changes his mind and takes him into his service in an attempt to become a gentleman like the Duke of Windsor.
Connie M’Gadza as Sidney Johnson in The Crown – Netflix
Some of the most amusing scenes in Mou Mou come when Fayed is taught by Johnson about dress, reading, and general manners. Johnson spoke fondly of his former master, saying ‘Your Majesty taught me everything with great patience and kindness’; In return, his servant became everything to him. Johnson comments at one point, ‘I took care of every aspect of his life, from the time he opened his eyes in the morning until the night he closed them.’ He recommends quintessentially English books for reading profit: Dickens, Wodehouse – one guesses the Jeeves and Wooster novels – and that which is essential for any prospective sportsman, Colonel Hawker’s Shooting Diaries.
The episode draws clear parallels between the two men, who tried to be something they never were, and ended up being ostracized by the society they so desperately wanted to join: neither of them Was not seen by the ‘firm’ as a person without personality. At the end of the episode, Fayed pays to be introduced to the Queen at a race meeting, but the Queen rejects him, and instead becomes infatuated with Princess Diana; In return he introduces Diana to his son, Dodi, and a deadly romance begins.
It is not hard to see why both the duke and Fayed were so eager to ingratiate themselves with the royals (or, in the duke’s case, to re-ingratiate themselves); As Johnson puts it, ‘Everything in British society begins and ends with the royal family. If you are seen in his company and trust him, everything else follows.’
Johnson wore the same gold and red dress he wore to the Duke of Windsor in Fayed’s job, and happily told the Washington Post in 1989 that ‘I feel myself on top of the world’. I cried during the party Fayed threw to celebrate his lease on the house three years ago. The restoration is so authentic that I expect to see the Duchess coming down the stairs asking, ‘How do I look?’
Mohamed Al-Fayed with Sidney Johnson in 1989 – Shutterstock
Fayed was keen to present himself as the natural heir to the Windsors. In interviews, he told how he had met her once at a party before the Duke’s death, and praised her as ‘the love story of the century… I loved her way and her warmth, the way she danced And completely moved by his sentiment. fun.’ He therefore saw his guardianship of Villa Windsor with Johnson as entirely placing himself in the same framework. Yet as Mau Mau shows, the royal family sought the return of many of the house’s artefacts on the grounds that they were their property, not those of the two, who became private citizens after Edward’s abdication in 1936 Were.
In a candid exchange, as Fayed and Johnson watch items being carried away by royal retainers, the butler comments: ‘Whatever thoughts you may be having, they are not dissimilar to the thoughts the Duke has of the royal family. I was alive every day.’ Fayed flared up – ‘What are you talking about? Mohammed al-Fayed made the queen very happy indeed’ – but this scene, despite being an invention, is indicative of the businessman’s complicated relationship with the royals. A mix of admiration, jealousy and a desire to be treated as ‘one of the family’. In any case, Johnson was unable to serve much longer, as he died on 17 January 1990 at the age of 66. In Mau Mau, there is a scene of his master serving him on his deathbed and then mourning for him. On his grave, on which the inscription reads ‘Sidney Johnson: Valet to the King.’
In fact, the only public statement Fayed made after his death was that Johnson was ‘truly a gentleman’. We will miss him a lot.
It is not the first time that The Crown could be accused of misrepresenting and fictionalizing its facts. But, in bringing an all-forgotten man back into the limelight – while simultaneously humanizing another, who is often demonized – it can be said to have done its overdue act of service.
This story was first published on November 14, 2022 and was republished on September 2, 2023.
