One of Mohamed Al Fayed’s sons has made a spirited defence of his father, dismissing the allegations that he raped five of his young women staff as ‘completely outrageous’.

Omar Al Fayed, 36, has told friends he believes the BBC screened its explosive documentary – Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods – to divert attention from the child porn disgrace of its TV news presenter Huw Edwards.

Environmentalist and publisher Omar told a friend: ‘I think the Beeb have had this up their back pocket.’

He added: ‘With all the fire they are coming under, I think it’s timely that they deployed it just as Huw Edwards is let off the hook effectively for the most disgusting conduct.’

On Monday, Edwards, 63, was given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted making indecent images of children.

But a woman sexually assaulted by Mohamed Al Fayed in the Nineties said it was ‘disgusting and absurd’ for Omar to draw a comparison between his father and Edwards.

‘Fayed’s appalling abuse was on a vast scale and the BBC deserves enormous praise for exposing it,’ she said.

Omar, the youngest of Fayed’s four children with his second wife, Finnish model Heini Wathen, conceded that his father was an ‘old-school chauvinist’. 

He told friends: ‘Perhaps he was like an older version of Donald Trump.’

But he added that ‘the allegations of rape are completely outrageous’.

Another close family member told a friend: ‘The family’s been attacked for decades by the Press. Some love them, some hate them.

‘They could never get to him [Mohamed] when he was alive.

‘Assailing the defenceless dead shows more about the attacker’s character than the character they aim to tarnish.’