Prince Harry was bombarded with a series of embarrassing questions about a 2006 visit to a strip club while dating Chelsea Davy as he addressed the High Court in London on Wednesday in his phone hack trial against the Mirror Group Newspapers, RadarOnline.com has learned.
This was the second day that Harry, 38, took the stand — making him the first royal to testify in over a century.
During the interrogation, MGN’s lawyer Andrew Green questioned the Duke of Sussex about a particular trip he made nearly 20 years ago to the Spearmint Rhino strip club in Berkshire, which appeared in MGN’s publication Sunday People.
In the article entitled Chell shockedThe outlet claimed that Chelsy “blew her top” when she discovered the night out with his friends.
“The article reports that Chelsy had ‘released a series of phone calls’ and includes a comment from a ‘high-ranking source’ that she had ‘gone crazy’, hung up the phone because she was so angry, and then called back at a half screaming at me for hours,” Harry said in his testimony.
“As far as I remember, I don’t think Chelsy went [sic] angry that I am going there,” he continued. “We spoke on the phone, but I promised her I hadn’t had a lap dance and stayed with the three other cadets who had girlfriends. The detail about the timing and length of the conversations is so specific. In hindsight, it seems likely to me that the defendant’s journalists had access to one of our phone records and put two and two together to make a story.”
On the stand, Harry questioned how the tabloid knew about a conversation, adding that he believed his ex would never speak to the press about their relationship.
“My girlfriend’s number was bizarrely owned by Mirror journalists. Very suspicious that they had her number […] I don’t believe she would give a journalist her number,” the embattled prince said in court.
As RadarOnline.com reported, Harry sued MGN for allegedly using unlawful information gathering, including hacking into his phone voicemails, using private investigators, between 1995 and 2011 while under surveillance by Pier Morgan.
Harry estimated that about 140 articles published by MGN between 1996 and 2010 contained information collected using illegitimate methods.
MGN has denied all allegations.
