Prince Harry court case: Duke lands in California after ‘last stay’ in Frogmore following bombshell testimony

Prince Harry, 38, is not thought to have seen his father, the King, or his brother, the Prince of Wales, during his brief trip, despite reportedly staying at royal residence Frogmore Cottage.

This meant he missed the opening day of his claim against MGN in court, and the judge gave him a rebuke. Justice Fancourt said he was a “little surprised” that the Duke of Sussex was not in court for the first day, according to the BBC.

Nikki Sanderson has said seeing her personal life “splashed over the papers” was “heartbreaking”.

“I suspected someone who worked in the press office at Corrie was leaking stories about me and I stopped sharing information about my private life with them as a result. I feel awful about this now.”

Sanderson said one article, which described her father as a love-rat and a 4-time wed womaniser, was particularly hurtful.

“I was so young and I was really struggling with the fact my dad was not present in my life and this article made it a lot worse. To have my personal life splashed over the papers for people to indulge in was heartbreaking.

“This is not celebrity gossip; it is my life. What made it even more upsetting is that it dragged my mum and my brother into it as well which is really hurtful as they have not chosen to be in the industry, so they don’t want their ‘dirty laundry’ all over the papers. It’s embarrassing.”

Nikki Sanderson told a court how phone hacking and unlawful information gathering by journalists had a “huge impact” on her life and left her in a “constant state of paranoia”.

The actress, who played Candice Stowe in Coronation Street and currently stars in Hollyoaks, said she felt she had been the victim of “abuse” because of the illegal activities of journalists for Mirror Group Newspapers.

In her witness statement for the trial at the High Court, she described the press intrusion as frightening, creepy and disturbing and told how the stories about her left her angry, upset and distressed.

She said: “MGN’s illegal activities have had a huge impact on how I navigated my life both at the time and to this day. I have spent the last 20 years of my life being hyper-aware of certain things.

“It’s ridiculous but that is the impact of what happened all those years ago.

“I can remember that I used to feel in a constant state of paranoia, and I was hyper- aware of the people that were around me. It was horrible because it made me feel like I couldn’t trust anyone as I would presume that they were selling stories to the press.”

The Duke of Sussex lost friendships “entirely unnecessarily” due to the “paranoia” caused by alleged unlawful information gathering, the High Court has been told as part of his case against the Daily Mirror’s publisher.

On Tuesday, Prince Harry appeared in a witness box in the Rolls Building to face cross-examination by a barrister for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) as part of his claim over alleged unlawful activities, including phone hacking.

The 38-year-old royal told the court that MGN’s alleged intrusion into his life contributed to “a huge amount of paranoia” in his relationships.

Appearing in court on Tuesday 6 June, the Duke of Sussex said he felt physically sick at “the thought of Piers Morgan and his band of journalists earwigging into my mother’s private and sensitive messages”.

Harry is suing Mirror Group Newspapers over alleged unlawful information gathering.

Speaking to Sky News later in the day, Mr Morgan insisted he hadn’t seen the comments, but went on to hit back, saying: “I wish him luck with his privacy campaign and look forward to reading about it in his next book.”

The Duke of Sussex was challenged over discrepancies between his autobiography Spare and his hacking trial witness statement over whether he wanted to meet ex-royal butler Paul Burrell, a former confidant of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Harry said in his witness statement that he was “firmly against” a meeting – but Andrew Green KC, for MGN, highlighted that Harry wrote in Spare that he wanted to fly back to confront Mr Burrell, who released a tell-all book about Harry’s late mother in 2003 after being cleared of stealing from her estate.

The ongoing phone hacking trial has now begun at the High Court today, with Coronation Street star Nikki Sanderson in the witness box today.

Stay with us as we feed you the latest from the court.

Throughout his High Court trial, Prince Harry has made several bombshell claims about the publisher of the Daily Mirror, such as using unlawful information-gathering to leak details about his personal life.

In fact, much of Harry’s case against MGN has focused on his past relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, a Zimbabwean businesswoman whom he dated from 2004 to 2011.

During his testimony on Tuesday (6 June), Harry blamed the “prying eyes of the tabloids” for ultimately leading to their breakup. “Our relationship was long distance for the majority of the time we were together, with Chelsy and I often living in different countries, so we relied on communicating by phone a lot,” he said in his 55-page witness statement obtained by The Independent.

“We, naturally, spoke about all types of personal matters, including all aspects of our relationship and this was often through voicemail,” he said. “As my girlfriend, I trusted Chelsy with the most private of information and visa versa.”

Harry has never been very fond of exams, bless him, and this was certainly a cross one: the masterly Andrew Green KC peering down sternly, taking off his glasses to jab home his points, popping them back on again to peer incredulously at the prince whenever he said something silly, writes Samuel Fishwick

Prince Harry has claimed that the UK government is at “rock bottom” in an extraordinary intervention into politics during his High Court case against a tabloid newspaper group.

The Duke of Sussex used a remarkable 55-page witness statement in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over alleged phone hacking to lash out at the standards of British government and democracy.

Accusing the government of being too “scared” of the press, he said: “Our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government – both of which I believe are at rock bottom.”

Harry said: “Democracy fails when your press fails to scrutinise and hold the government accountable, and instead choose to get into bed with them so they can ensure the status quo.”