‘Cronies and hangers-on reveal royal stories’

Members of the royal family are surrounded by “a large number of staff, friends and hangers-on” who brief stories to the media, Prince Harry’s privacy trial has been told.

The identity of Harry’s first serious girlfriend was disclosed by the manager of the Argentinian ranch where they went on holiday, the High Court was told on Monday.

Peter Wright, giving evidence, was editor of The Mail on Sunday when the newspaper revealed that Harry was in a relationship with Chelsy Davy in 2004.

He said in a written witness statement that the contacts of newspaper reporters included “numerous cronies and hangers-on who, like moths to a flame, are drawn to the social circles of celebrities and royal figures, all too ready to ‘big themselves up’ and bask in reflected glory (or even earn some money) by passing information to journalists”.

Harry and others in the royal family were “surrounded by a large number of staff, friends and hangers-on, many of whom briefed journalists”, he said.

“When an article quoted a royal insider or a palace source, it was not a cover for so-called unlawful information gathering but a simple statement of fact”.

Wright said the name of Davy, now 40, who was a student from Zimbabwe, was first provided to a journalist by “a member of the staff (I think the manager) at the ranch where Prince Harry was staying”.

He added: “I don’t believe any methods like phone hacking, landline tapping or sticky-window microphones were used.”

At Harry’s graduation ceremony after he passed his army pilots’ course, in Andover, Hampshire, in 2010

INDIGO/GETTY IMAGES

Harry told the trial last month: “I was never suspicious of Chelsy in relation to stories like this but I was of her friends … this sort of intrusion was terrifying for Chelsy. It made her feel like she was being hunted and the press had caught her and it was terrifying for me too because there was nothing I could do to stop it and now she was in my world.” Their relationship ended in 2010.

Harry, 41, and Sadie Frost, 60, an actress, as well as other celebrities, are suing Associated Newspapers for alleged unlawful information gathering including hacking, landline tapping and “blagging”. The publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday denies wrongdoing.

Frost has complained about an article which reported that her then husband, Jude Law, 53, also an actor, was preparing to sue the Soho House private members club in London after their two-year-old daughter, Iris, swallowed an ecstasy tablet found on the floor of the premises. Frost told the trial that she believed the story in 2002 was obtained by voicemail hacking.

Wright, 72, who was editor of The Mail on Sunday from 1998 to 2012 and has since been editor emeritus of all Associated Newspapers titles, told the trial: “I remember the incident because I was shocked that anyone would take a baby to a club where there were ecstasy tablets left lying on the floor.

“However, I don’t remember anything about the sourcing of this story or who briefed us on it.”

He denied “allegations of falsehoods” made by the celebrities’ lawyers in relation to his evidence to the 2012 Leveson inquiry into media standards.

He denied he was being misleading by stating that Associated had not “habitually used private investigators”, that the investigators’ work was not unlawful and that payments to private investigators were banned from 2007.

Wright said that Associated gave the Leveson inquiry an electronic database of payments to Steve Whittamore, an inquiry agent convicted in 2005 of breaching data protection laws. He said he was unaware at the time of paper copies of invoices showing details of work done by Whittamore.

“While I was editor of The Mail on Sunday, to the best of my knowledge the paper did not carry out or commission, or knowingly use information derived from, phone hacking, landline phone tapping, bugging vehicles or using sticky-window mini-microphones, computer or email hacking as alleged,” he said.

The trial continues.