The royal family was said to be on “tenterhooks” when Prince Harry took to the stand last week in his legal battle against the UK press over alleged phone hacking. According to palace insiders, it was the Prince and Princess of Wales who were feeling the most on edge as Harry, 38, dropped bombshell after bombshell during the courtroom showdown.
“They’re in completely uncharted waters here and have no idea what to expect, with some questioning whether William and Kate could even be summoned,” says our source. “William could easily be a key witness in some of these incidents and he could, in theory, be called upon to clarify some of the details.”
The shockers Harry has been spilling have, until now, been strictly confined to the inner offices of Clarence House, but palace officials fear there’s more to come. Royal biographer Phil Dampier tells Woman’s Day that the royals “will be wishing Harry puts a sock in it for good”.
No one is safe
Phil goes on to say that the royals would have been looking on “in horror as Harry gave evidence and made a fool of himself”. He explains, “Harry is once again washing dirty linen in public. It was totally unnecessary for him to bring up [his mother Princess Diana’s former lover] James Hewitt again. To say he couldn’t be sure Hewitt wasn’t his father until he was 30 means he is trashing Diana’s reputation and raking up a painful past.”
Meanwhile, according to another insider, Kate, 41, and William, 40, are “genuinely worried about Harry”, despite the humiliation he’s causing them.
“The decisions he’s making and the battles he’s choosing are incredibly risky,” says our source. “There’s very little to gain from doing this. The whole thing is turning into a circus and the Queen must be rolling in her grave.”
Every bombshell from Harry’s testimony
Betrayed by the butler
Paul was Diana’s butler for 10 years.
It’s no secret that Harry has never been a fan of his mother’s former butler – going so far as to call him a “two-faced s**t” – so when asked about Paul Burrell, 65, while on the stand, he didn’t hold back.
“Both my brother and I had very strong feelings about how indiscreet Paul had proven to be with the way he sold our mother’s possessions and how he had given numerous interviews about her,” he told the court.
Trust issues
Harry with his nanny Tiggy in 1997.
Harry revealed he now knows the fear his mother was feeling ahead of her car crash in Paris in 1997. The duke explained that he has also suffered from the same “paranoia” over the years, adding that he felt he couldn’t trust his former nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke and his friend Mark “Marko” Dyer. “I doubted the loyalty of Tiggy and even Marko, who I really looked up to,” he said. “My brother and I even stopped talking to Marko for a long period of time. I can see how much my life was wasted on this paranoia.”
With Marko in 2016.
Those ‘real dad’ rumours
Diana with James in 1989.
During the phone-hacking trial, Harry addressed long-standing rumours that he’s the son of Diana’s former lover James Hewitt. “At the time, when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt damaging and very real to me,” he said. “They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born.”
Targeted by Piers Morgan
Harry claims Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, has attacked him and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, since he launched legal proceedings over the alleged phone hacking.
“Both myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation from Piers, presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity,” he said.
Drama down under
The prince also spoke about his gap year as a teenager in Australia, describing it as “awful” and “suffocating”. Despite spending the majority of his time in 2003 in the outback, Harry alleges he felt like he was being watched. “I’m unclear how anyone had known we were there,” he said of a trip he took to the Sunshine Coast. “The fact the photographer turned up on a random beach in Noosa – where no other people were – is incredibly suspicious.”
Relationships ruined
“A royal life wasn’t for her,” said Harry of his ex, Chelsy.
In a witness statement given to his lawyers, Harry blamed the press for his split from his former on-again, off-again girlfriend Chelsy Davy. “Every time he was in a relationship or even an alleged relationship, that person’s entire family and often their friends were dragged into the mess, and were the subject of unlawful activity on the part of MGN [Mirror Group Newspapers],” said his lawyers.
