Prince Harry's Alleged Prank at a Shooting Weekend
Journalist Charlotte Griffiths has claimed that Prince Harry placed a white pill on her tongue during the early days of their friendship. The pair were, according to the journalist, invited to a shooting weekend at a 4,000-acre estate in Hampshire in December 2011. Writing in her latest piece for the Daily Mail, Charlotte recalled how she was sitting next to Harry, who was at the time third in line to the throne, and he decided to play a prank on her to 'kick start' their relationship.
The Incident with the Pill
Charlotte claimed that Harry placed a 'small white pill' that looked 'almost certainly [like] paracetamol' on her tongue. She wrote: 'From his pocket, he removed a small white pill. Then he held it up to my face, popped it onto my tongue, and said with a smile: “Now I know I can trust you!”... Take that white pill he’d so brazenly stuck in my mouth (which I discreetly removed and folded into a napkin soon afterwards). It was almost certainly paracetamol, rather than something more sinister. But I couldn’t be entirely sure.'
Context: Harry's Legal Battle with Daily Mail Publisher
The news comes after the Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence lost their High Court claims against the Daily Mail’s publisher over allegations of unlawful information gathering. A group of household names, also including David Furnish, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, alleged acts including voicemail interception, landline tapping and obtaining information by deception – also known as 'blagging', were carried out by private investigators, freelance journalists and staff at Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). ANL strongly denied the claims, defending the cases, which it said had been brought too late.
Court Ruling and Aftermath
In a decision on Tuesday, Judge Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed all of the claims, ruling that none of the group of seven had proven the allegations of unlawful information gathering. He said in the 436-page ruling: 'For the reasons given in this judgment, each of the claimants’ claims is dismissed.' Following the judgment, ANL said it was an 'overwhelming victory' and a 'magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism' in a case with legal costs of more than £50 million. In a statement, the publisher continued: 'Mr Justice Nicklin today cleared the Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday, and dismissed every single one of the 97 allegations made by the claimants. In every case, the judge accepted the honesty of our journalists’ evidence on how they sourced their stories.' ANL added: 'The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated. As the judgment clearly shows, every single article was legitimately sourced.' The Duke of Sussex and Baroness Doreen Lawrence have described the High Court’s dismissal of their unlawful information gathering claims against the Daily Mail’s publisher as a 'complete and obvious whitewash'.
