Prince Harry's former friend has revealed a strange moment when the royal reportedly gave her a pill as a trust exercise during a party. The disclosure came during the latest episode of the Daily Express podcast, the Daily Expresso.
Charlotte Griffiths, editor of the Mail on Sunday, told host JJ Anisiobi about the encounter. When asked what happened with the pill Harry placed in her mouth, she said it was a sort of trust test, with Harry saying, "Pop that in your mouth and then I know I can trust you."
Trust Test at a Party
Griffiths explained she did not actually take the pill. "I did genuinely fold it into my napkin because I was like, I don't know what it is, and this is a member of the Royal Family," she said. "I can drink like the rest of them, but I don't fancy my chances being off my head in front of a royal... I was sort of game for a laugh, but I didn't really go along with it, to be honest."
When Anisiobi asked if Harry did this with other women and if it was normal for him in those days, Griffiths said she thought the move was "a passing joke."
Encounter from 2011
The journalist previously revealed the encounter from December 2011, during a country-house shooting weekend in Hampshire. She recalled sitting next to Harry, who was at the time third in line to the throne, and described how he took a small white pill from his pocket and popped it onto her tongue, saying, "Now I know I can trust you!"
Griffiths wrote in the Daily Mail that the pill was "almost certainly paracetamol, rather than something more sinister. But I couldn't be entirely sure." She also noted she discreetly removed and folded it into a napkin soon afterwards.
Legal Battle Context
The disclosure came amid Prince Harry's legal battle against Associated Newspapers Limited, during which text messages and communications between him and Griffiths were exposed. The messages contradicted Harry's previous claims that he had had minimal contact with Griffiths or had met her only once.
Harry messaged Griffiths on Facebook from an account under the alias "Spike Wells," referred to her as "Sugar" and "Griff," complained about being "stuck in Cornwall doing army stuff," and told her he missed their "movie snuggles" before signing off with multiple kisses. Griffiths addressed Harry as "Mr. Mischief" and signed off one message with "Smooches, CG String. Xxx".
Court records and phone logs also highlighted a 2.50am phone call and subsequent texts in June 2012 when Griffiths tried to get into a flat belonging to Harry's friend Arthur Landon, where Harry was already hanging out late at night. Harry's legal team argued that Griffiths had never disclosed her profession as a journalist and that the interaction was a brief, meaningless social cross-path. Griffiths later published a detailed breakdown in the Daily Mail explaining that she eventually "ghosted" Harry simply because she was a young reporter trying to build a serious career.
