Prince Harry 'Tampongate' Statement Suggests 'Desire To Humiliate' Charles

By including a reference to one of the most embarrassing scandals in recent royal history in his witness statement as part of an ongoing tabloid phone-hacking lawsuit, Prince Harry could be looking to "humiliate" his father, King Charles III, according to a new episode of Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast.

Harry is currently suing Rupert Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers (NGN), publishers of the Sun and now-defunct News of The World tabloids, over allegations of historic phone hacking dating back to the 1990s.

During court hearings in April, the prince's 31-page witness statement was released in which he makes a number of claims, including that his older brother, Prince William, accepted a payout from the group in 2020, and that he sought permission from the queen to launch his own legal action.

NGN argues that the prince is too late to file his claims over alleged phone hacking and other illegal information gathering techniques he says were used to inform stories about him, because the six-year period in which to bring them has expired.

Harry argues that he was unable to bring the case before the six-year period because the monarchy kept information from him and that there was a "secret agreement" in place between the palace and publisher.

In illustrating why the monarchy may have sought such an agreement, Harry suggested it was to keep embarrassing stories from coming out in court, such as: "Details of an intimate telephone conversation that took place between my father and step-mother in 1989, while he was still married to my mother."

This conversation was published in 1993 and dubbed by the press "Tampongate," after Charles was heard suggesting he would like to "live inside" Camilla's trousers, joking that he might be reincarnated as a tampon.

The reasoning for Harry's need to reference the scandal is unclear but could signal a desire to "humiliate" the king amid a royal family feud with his youngest son, Newsweek's The Royal Report has heard.

"Obviously it's quite striking that Harry has chosen to throw one of the most humiliating episodes in Charles' life right into the middle of this case when, to be honest, it was completely unnecessary to do so," chief correspondent, Jack Royston, explained.

"The point that Harry's trying to make here is really simple and straightforward, that I cannot see anybody contesting, and it was perfectly possible to make it with reference to evidence that is already part of the case," he continued.

"It's very straightforward that the palace would not want embarrassing information to come out in court, but the embarrassing information would be nothing whatsoever to do with 'tampongate.' It would have been to do with the voicemail messages that had been hacked by journalists and private investigators. And we know what those were," he said.

At the center of Harry's case against NGN are stories that are claimed to have been written with information gained through hacking the voicemails of members of the royal family and their staff. In Harry's case this involves stories about his then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, in addition to other incidents.

"You know, this is the kind of stuff that's already there in the court documents, which shows that there would have been embarrassing revelations if a royal family member had been called to give evidence," Royston said of the voicemails.

"So, the fact that he chose to throw 'tampongate' in there when it's such an old example is either just a desire to humiliate Charles by dragging it all back to the surface again," he said.

"Or perhaps it's a kind of dig along the lines that because that was a telephone call, maybe Harry is trying to imply that it was a result of wiretapping by a tabloid newspaper and that maybe Charles should have taken action over it," Royston said. "But Harry doesn't say that."

Buckingham Palace has not commented on Harry's court case or his legal filings. The palace also did not comment on "tampongate" at the time of it's publication in 1993.

The scandal was recently revived when it was recreated for Netflix's hit royal drama The Crown in which Charles was portrayed by Dominic West and Camilla by Olivia Williams.

Harry is set to be publicly reunited with his family for the first time since the court filings and since the publication of his bombshell memoir Spare on May 6, where he will attend his father's coronation at Westminster Abbey.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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