Surreal moment, number one. It’s 10 minutes before proceedings are due to start and a visit to the gents is in order. Outside I find a muscle-bound security guard with an earpiece. He seems friendly enough and doesn’t try to stop me entering. Inside there is only one other man, Prince Harry, washing his hands. We look at each other and both do a double-take. Thinking the same thought: “What the hell are you doing here?” But we’re both thoroughly British. So we just smile at one another and say “hello”. He then dries his hands and leaves. My brush with royalty.
Surreal moment, number two. Prince Harry being in court 15 of the Rolls Building at all. I mean, WTF? The royals normally go out of their way to avoid controversy. The idea of a court appearance would spark a total meltdown. The last time a senior royal was cross-examined was in 1891.
But not Harry. He is on a mission. To bring down the tabloid press. To denounce newspaper editors. In particular, Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror. To expose phone hacking. What’s more, he doesn’t care how much it costs. Or the collateral damage. This is personal. You can feel the pain.
The court rises. Mr Justice Fancourt takes his seat and we are quickly under way. David Sherborne, Harry’s permatanned brief, gets things started. He’s an old hand at this – having previously acted for Princess Diana, Johnny Depp and Coleen Rooney – and comes alive with the attention. He’s never knowingly underspoken. Partly it’s because he loves the sound of his own voice. Velvety, smooth. But mostly it’s because he’s usually paid by the word. But this time he keeps it short. As a special favour to us, he’s allowing the court to call his client Prince Harry. Phew. Glad that’s sorted.
The prince walks over to the witness box and takes the oath under the insignia of the crown. The weird just got weirder. Show time is about to begin. Andrew Green, who is representing Mirror Group Newspapers, has been granted the best part of a day and a half to cross-examine the prince on his written statement that has just been made public. In order to keep things relatively short, the judge has insisted the defence and the prosecution choose 33 out of Harry’s 147 alleged complaints between them and that the courtroom drama be settled on that basis.
Green opens with a hurried apologia. He acknowledges Harry has had to live with significant tabloid intrusion and that the next few hours will be testing. But he will do his best to make it as unobjectionable as possible. I bet he doesn’t say that to most of his adversaries in court.
In fact I know he doesn’t. He’s already left previous witnesses on the verge of tears. Barely able to remember their own names. Green hasn’t become one of the country’s top barristers by charm alone. There’s a shard of ice in his heart. But for Harry, he’s prepared to make an exception. At any rate, for now we get to see Mr Nice Guy. A man falling over backwards to be fair. Well, as close as he can get.
“MGN unreservedly apologise for the one instance of unlawful information gathering (UIG),” Green says. Mmm. We’re now being expected to believe that at a time when hacking and UIG was rife among the tabs, MGN spotted just one example in relation to the duke. Well. Whatever. I guess it’s all down to what anyone can prove. “And if the judge finds that you are right,” he continues, “then there will be a bigger apology.” I bet there will be. Though the prince might want slightly more than that. He hasn’t flown half way across the world just to hear someone say sorry. He wants the press to grovel.
We then lapse into a familiar routine for the rest of the day. Starting with the newspaper stories where he believed Harry’s claims of illegality were weakest. The time when his mother, Princess Diana, had come to visit him at school. His phone couldn’t possibly have been hacked for that one because he hadn’t even had a phone then. “Well someone else’s could have been,” Harry mumbled. He wasn’t at his best being faced with barbed questions. And had he actually read the story in the paper? Probably not. But his friends had. In any case, he had trust issues.
On we went. The time when Harry went off for a pizza. The time he had lunch with a bodyguard. The Highgrove gardener. The glandular fever. The drugs. Always the same. Had he actually read any of the MGN stories? Then how could they have caused distress? And was it just coincidence that the same stories had already appeared in other papers. And if they had hacked phones to get them, it was no skin off their nose. They were just there to copy. So much easier than getting any stories of their own. And always Green took us back to the proof. He didn’t care what things looked like or what Harry felt. Just prove that MGN hacked. Or shove it.
Harry rarely raised his voice above a whisper. He never lost his temper. Never lapsed into therapy speak. But he never looked entirely comfortable. Whatever he had been hoping for out of his day in court, he wasn’t getting. There was no catharsis. No magic moment when the scales of justice came swinging down in his favour.
It was all too much of an effort. He wasn’t even getting asked about some of his bigger claims. Just lost in the detail. Strangled by the weeds. Time and again, his most frequent answers were, “I don’t remember” and “You’d have to ask the journalists concerned.” He was beginning to see why so many had advised him not to throw himself on the court’s mercy. The law could be pitiless.
Long before the end, Harry began to flag. We all did. Eventually the judge called it a day. Sherborne took off his wig and primped his hair. The volume, darling. He needed to look his best for the camera run outside court. At least someone was enjoying himself.
• This article was amended on 7 June 2023. An earlier version referred to MGN apologising for one instance of phone hacking in relation to the duke; that should have referred to one instance of unlawful information gathering.
