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A diary editor has described being invited to join an all-night party with Prince Harry before he attended a military parade as she was a member of his social set.
Charlotte Griffiths told Harry’s privacy trial on Tuesday that he sent her his telephone number via Facebook in 2011. She also claimed that Prince William told her that Kate was pregnant with Prince George four days before the official announcement.
Griffiths, who works for the Mail on Sunday, was questioned about a telephone call to Harry at 2.50am in June 2012, and three text message exchanges.
The prince, giving evidence in January, told the High Court that “I am not friends with any of these journalists” and none of his close circle would talk to the media.
• Harry trial told: ‘Cronies and hangers-on reveal royal stories’
However, Griffiths told the court that on that night of the call, she had been to a club with Arthur Landon, 45, a film producer and one of the prince’s oldest friends, who invited her back to his home for an “after party”.
“Arthur hadn’t made it home by the time that I arrived but told me Prince Harry was staying at the flat and that the party had already started under Prince Harry’s watch,” she said in a written witness statement.
“He told me that Prince Harry would let me in if I made it there first. The music was loud and they didn’t hear the doorbell, so Arthur advised me to call and text to be let in.
“That particular night stuck in my mind as I remember it was around the time of the Trooping of the Colour and we all thought it was quite funny that Prince Harry had stayed up all night and said he had to go to that or something related in the morning.
“I remember joking with another friend who was at the party that we should go along to watch and so I think my text to him in the morning would have either been to see if he made it or to tell him that we weren’t coming, as we had only got to bed in the early hours of the morning.”
Harry also told the court that he did not use the Facebook identity “Mr Mischief” to contact the Mail on Sunday journalist, as put to him by Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited, publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Griffiths said in her evidence: “I have never said that he used the name Mr Mischief.”
Harry with Chelsy Davy, his first girlfriend, who went to the University of Leeds at the same time as Griffiths
EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS
Harry attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony, which marked the official birthday of Elizabeth II, the next weekend.
Harry, now 41, and other high-profile figures claim that they were victims of unlawful information gathering including hacking and “blagging” calls by Associated Newspapers, the publisher and its journalists deny wrongdoing.
Griffiths joined the Mail on Sunday in 2008, was diary editor from 2013 to 2020 and is now editor-at-large.
The journalist was a student at the University of Leeds at the same time as Harry’s first girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, 40, and has continued to “socialise in similar high society circles ever since”, including attending polo events and nightclubs in west London.
Griffiths said in an initial statement that she first met Harry at a house party in Ibiza. She told the court that it was a “typo” and she meant that she met Harry’s friends, including Landon. She said that she subsequently attended weekend house parties where Harry was a guest in London and Wiltshire.
WIlliam and Kate leaving hospital in 2012 after she was treated for hyperemesis gravidarum
INDIGO/GETTY IMAGES
The journalist said that she also attended a country weekend in late November/early December 2012 that Prince William and Kate were both due to attend.
“William arrived solo on the Friday and explained that Kate was suffering with morning sickness,” she said. “The fact that she was pregnant with their first child would have been big news and St James’ Palace only confirmed it the following Monday because she had to be admitted to hospital.”
Griffiths said that she “kept it to myself” as the weekend was a private event. When the then editor, Geordie Greig, 65, found out, he was “quite annoyed … as we would have scooped the rest of the press”, she said.
She told the court: “I draw a line between my professional and own personal social life, as compared to my attending events as a journalist.”
• Journalist calls Harry’s legal team ‘shysters, spivs and useful idiots’
David Sherborne, representing Harry, claimed that Griffiths “invented” the claim to “make up connections” with the royal family as a newspaper article at the time reported that William did not tell his own family until the Monday.
David Dillon, 59, now the editor of the Mail on Sunday, said that when he joined the newspaper in 2001, journalists used a private investigator named Steve Whittamore, who was well-known across Fleet Street.
He said that Whittamore found addresses and ex-directory telephone numbers and carried out vehicle registration and criminal record checks.
Dillon said that he was unaware that some of Whittamore’s searches were unlawful until he was interviewed by police in 2004 about information relating to Bob Crow, then the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and Emma Beal, the partner of Ken Livingstone, then Mayor of London.
Police told Dillon that no further action would be taken against him. Whittamore was convicted in 2005 of breaching data protection laws.
The trial continues.
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