Prince Harry is grilled over ‘lap dance’ at strip club during London phone hacking trial

Prince Harry was today grilled over a ‘boozy’ night at a ‘sleazy strip joint’ and accused of ‘speculating’ once again after admitting he was not sure if his phone was hacked. 

The duke is suing Mirror Group Newspapers for damages over claims journalists at its titles used hacking, ‘blagging’ and other illegal means of deception to write 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010.

He repeatedly clashed with the KC representing the publisher during the second day of a gruelling cross-examination. 

Andrew Green KC told the prince after one fractious exchange: ‘Could I just repeat what I said yesterday – this is about me asking you questions, not you asking me questions.’

Meanwhile, Harry repeatedly pushed back against the barrister’s line of questioning, telling him several times: ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

During the second day of Harry’s gruelling cross-examination, the duke – 

• Told the court he had brought the case against MGN to protect his wife Meghan Markle from ‘intrusion and hate’; 
• Said he would feel a sense of ‘injustice’ if his claims were rejected by the judge;  
• Repeatedly denied that he had engaged in ‘total speculation’ over his allegations of unlawful information gathering by MGN; 
• Said he ‘knows of’ Omid Scobie – who wrote his unofficial biography, Spare; 
• Said he once found a tracking device on the car of his ex-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy which he alleged was put there by a private investigator, Mike Behr;

Today, Harry told the High Court he had first decided to launch a claim against MGN after ‘bumping’ into his barrister David Sherborne on holiday in France.

‘I think it was a discussion about how to find a way to stop the abuse and intrusion that was coming against me and my wife… without relying on the institution’s lawyers,’ Harry said.

Mr Green asked him whether Harry had been aware he had a claim against MGN before the conversation.

‘Not at all,’ the prince replied.

Harry told the court he filed his claims against MGN and News Group ‘at around the same time’.

He said he believed there was ‘industrial scale destruction of evidence’ of unlawful information. Asked by Mr Green where he got this idea from, he replied: ‘My legal team’.

The barrister asked whether he thought his phone was ‘consistently hacked’ throughout the 15-year period between 1996 and 2011, the time period that makes up his claim against MGN.

‘It could have been happening on a daily basis, I simply don’t know,’ Harry responded.

Asked if he knew of any evidence to show this, Harry said: ‘No, that’s part of the reason I’m here, my lord’.

One of the many stories mentioned by Mr Green was a Sunday People article in April 2006 about Harry visiting a Spearmint Rhino lap dancing club near Slough with friends.

The story – which was headlined ‘Chel shocked’, reported that Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy Davy ‘blew her top’ about his ‘boozy’ evening at a ‘sleazy strip joint’.

Giving evidence yesterday, Harry said that ‘to the best of my recollection’ he did ‘not recall’ his ex ‘going mad’ about the night out. 

Yesterday, he claimed details about the night out had been obtained by a journalist hacking a phone. And today, he also claimed additional details had come from a bouncer paid by MGN. 

Earlier in today’s cross-examination, Mr Green asked the duke about another piece published in the Sunday People in May 2005 about him having a knee injury and fellow cadets at Sandhurst complaining he was given ‘preferential treatment’ by being let off ‘gruelling marches’. 

The barrister asked about a press release issued by Clarence House about the injury, which included a quote from Harry. He asked the duke whether he stood by the evidence in his witness statement, in which he said he wasn’t ‘going around discussing any medical issues or injuries’.

Harry replied: ‘Yes, it is entirely accurate. That is a reference to while I was at Sandhurst and the distrust that I ended up having … with the medical staff at Sandhurst.’

Mr Green then turned to an article published in the Independent newspaper on the same day as the People article, and asked the duke if he accepted there was a degree of public interest in the story.

Yesterday, Harry said there was ‘a difference between the public interest and what is in the interests of the public’.

Harry replied today: ‘No, I do not.’

Mr Green asked the duke what he thought a public interest story about him would be.

‘I’m not entirely sure, I’d be speculating,’ Harry replied.

‘Well could you speculate for a moment,’ Mr Green said.

Harry said it could be in the public interest to report ‘a life-threatening injury’ he had suffered.

At one point in the cross-examination, the royal spoke directly to the judge.

Mr Green responded: ‘Could I ask the questions?’

In another testy exchange, Harry was asked if he would be happy or disappointed to find out that his phone had never been hacked by Mirror Group journalists.

‘That would be speculating,’ Harry replied.

He said there was ‘industrial scale hacking’ occurring at newspapers, so would feel it was an ‘injustice’ if this was not ‘proved’ in his case.

‘So you want your phone to have been hacked,’ Mr Green said.

‘No one wants to have been phone hacked,’ Harry replied.

Mr Green questioned Harry about a September 2007 People article that claimed his relationship at the time was ‘in crisis after a string of bitter bust-ups’.

Harry told the court that the ‘whole article itself is suspicious’, adding: ‘I never discussed with the Palace any details of my relationship with my girlfriend.’

Mr Green asked the duke if he was alleging that information in the story came from phone hacking.

‘Yes,’ Harry said, adding: ‘I say that everything that has been attributed to a Palace source… was obtained unlawfully.

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‘The Palace wouldn’t know this information.’

Mr Green said the prince was in the ‘land of total speculation about where this information might have come from’.

‘Not at all, I disagree,’ Harry responded. 

Mr Green also used the phrase yesterday when Harry said he was ‘not sure’ whose phone was hacked when he broke his thumb playing football at Eton and it appeared in the media. 

The duke then claimed another Mirror article about his breakup with Chelsy Davy had been obtained through voicemail interception.

The article ‘Down in the dumped’ reported on an ’emotional phone call’ in which Ms Davy apparently asked for a trial separation.

Harry said in his witness statement yesterday that the piece included ‘a quote from a ”friend”, that said we needed some time out, but that we were likely to get back together’.

But he said neither he nor Ms Davy had ever spoken about what happened to anyone outside their closest friends.

Harry said he thought the information could have been obtained through voicemail, but confirmed he did not specifically recall leaving a voicemail as it happened so long ago.

Mr Green said the trial separation was ‘already widely reported’ in the Sunday papers. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Mr Green,’ Harry replied.

Referring to a December 2007 article about Harry dropping Ms Davy off after she spent the night at Kensington Palace, which included a paparazzi photograph of Ms Davy, Mr Green suggested that was something ‘anyone could have observed’.

The barrister said there were often photographers outside the palace, to which Harry said: ‘They were only there for pretty much emergencies or big moments of the Royal Family – weddings, engagements, hospital visits.’

Mr Green said: ‘They were there on this occasion,’ to which Harry replied: ‘That is why it’s suspicious.’

The prince said he suspected he had seen the article at the time of publication as he believed his security team would have alerted him to it.

Mr Green also mentioned a Sunday Mirror article about Harry’s breakup with Ms Davy, which was headlined ‘Hooray Harry’s dumped’ and contained reports of a ‘vodka binge’. 

The duke said it was ‘hurtful to say the least’ that ‘such a private moment was turned into a bit of a laugh’.

Mr Green said the nickname had been used to describe the royal in previous stories.

‘It was not celebrating the demise of your relationship,’ he added.

After the Duke of Sussex finished giving evidence, former Daily Mirror royal correspondent Jane Kerr, one of MGN’s witnesses in the trial, was sworn in.

In a written witness statement, Ms Kerr said she became a royal reporter and later royal correspondent for the newspaper from around 1997 to 2007.

Ms Kerr’s byline features on a number of the articles that are being examined in the trial of Harry’s claim against MGN over alleged unlawful information gathering.

She said in her statement: ‘I have never engaged in voicemail interception at MGN or elsewhere and I have never engaged the services of private investigators or other third parties to engage in unlawful information gathering activities.’

In a 49-page witness statement unveiled yesterday, the duke said that he found it ‘very hard to trust anyone, which led to bouts of depression and paranoia’.

‘Friendships were lost entirely unnecessarily,’ he said, later adding that some of his friends ‘became instant targets’.

The duke later said that he can now see ‘how much of my life was wasted on this paranoia’, adding: ‘I’ve always heard people refer to my mother as paranoid, but she wasn’t.

‘She was fearful of what was actually happening to her and now I know that I was the same.’

Mr Green questioned Harry on about 20 of the 33 articles over the course of yesterday.

Harry was asked about why he has complained about articles in MGN titles when the same information had previously been put into the public domain by other media outlets.

The duke said his understanding was that MGN journalists used unlawful methods to get ‘exclusive’ angles on existing stories or to move the story on in some way.

Mr Green also asked Harry about his claim that articles ’caused him to be paranoid and to distrust those around him’, and whether he was referring to specific MGN articles or ‘the general effect of all of the articles’ about him.

Harry said: ‘Yes, because … it is 20 years ago and I simply can’t other than speculate whether I saw these articles at the time.

‘I certainly saw a lot of articles at the time and was made aware … unfortunately, by the behaviour and reaction of my inner circle.’

The duke added that when information he had told to only a few members of his inner circle was made public, ‘your circle of friends starts to shrink’.

MGN is contesting his claim and has either denied or not admitted that the articles about Harry being examined at the trial involved phone hacking or unlawful activity.

At the start of the duke’s individual case on Monday, Mr Green said there was ‘simply no evidence capable of supporting the finding that the Duke of Sussex was hacked, let alone on a habitual basis’ and that payment records used in the duke’s claim ‘simply do not demonstrate unlawful conduct or knowledge thereof’.

Harry’s claim is being heard alongside three other ‘representative’ claims in a trial which began last month and is due to last six to seven weeks.

The three other representative claimants are Coronation Street actor Michael Turner – known professionally as Michael Le Vell -who is best known for playing Kevin Webster in the long-running soap, former Coronation Street actress Nikki Sanderson, and comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman.

BELOW IS HARRY’S FULL WRITTEN WITNESS STATEMENT