Prince Harry big on broad statements and feelings, but little on facts in his day in the witness box

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, departs after giving evidence at the Mirror Group Phone hacking trial at the Rolls Building at High Court in London.

Prince Harry’s day in court was momentous. An historic, once-in-a-130 year event. He is happy to be the crusader against the evil media, blaming in this case the Mirror Group Newspapers for self admitted paranoia and mistrust, blaming the press for creating his reputation as what he describes “the ‘playboy prince’, the ‘failure’, the ‘drop out’ or, in my case, the ‘thicko’, the ‘cheat’, the ‘underage drinker’, the ‘irresponsible drug taker’.’’

He told the High Court in London: “As a teenager and in my early twenties, I ended up feeling as though I was playing up to a lot of the headlines and stereotypes that they wanted to pin on me mainly because I thought that, if they are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as well ‘do the crime’, so to speak. It was a downward spiral, whereby the tabloids would constantly try and coax me, a ‘damaged’ young man, into doing something stupid that would make a good story and sell lots of newspapers. Looking back on it now, such behaviour on their part is utterly vile.”

Harry was big on broad statements and feelings, but little on specifics and facts in his day in the witness box claiming that “the press have been hostile since I was born” and that both the press and the UK were “at rock bottom”.

When the Mirror Group Newspapers counsel Andrew Green went through 20 stories, Harry couldn’t show how the information came about other than he was annoyed the press had obtained information about him. He admitted at one point he has “little to go on” other than suspicions.

Even when many of the articles were follow ups from other newspapers, or from information given by St James Palace or even his palace aides, or perhaps someone noticing Harry and then selling the photos, Harry refused to accept that the Mirror articles weren’t based on anything other than illegal news gathering.

The Mirror group has strenuously denied hacking or obtaining information about Harry using illegal means, but it did apologise for one instance, not part of this case, where the group paid a private investigator to report on Harry’s antics at a nightclub.

Political satire artist Kaya Mar holds a painting portraying Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, as members of the media gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.

Harry and his lawyers have tried to link the Mirror’s involvement in previous hacking cases to extrapolate that Harry was also a target, highlighting how payments were made to private investigators.

What is clear is that Harry is struggling to accept journalists may have got information from talking to people. One story in the Mirror in 2005 was about his girlfriend Chelsy Davy preparing to dump him because of speculation he’d flirted with a mystery brunette at a party.

Green said the journalist had done nothing unlawful in speaking to people at the party, to which Harry replied: “No, if that’s what she did.”

Green said the quote in the article was attributed to “a pal”, but he revealed the source was Davy’s uncle.

In reply, Harry called it “convenient” to attribute the source to someone like that and said it was based on the understanding that the journalist was being truthful about the source.

He says using “pal” or a “friend” as a source was a particular hallmark of phone hacking.

“It is what I would do if I was doing something illegal,” he said.

Earlier in the court the source of one article raised by Harry as being of concern turned out to be himself, where he had given an embargoed interview to a Press Association reporter two days prior to publication.

There is one day still to go for Harry in the witness box and he is just the first of four main witnesses with the case expected to last around seven weeks. Harry of course is the big name witness, but so far, the evidentiary pile is lacking star power.