What really happened inside the courtroom in Prince Harry's £10m case. JAN MOIR had a ringside seat - and reveals the details that tell so much...
At 10.22 on Tuesday morning, celebrity barrister David Sherborne walked into Court 30, handed his overcoat to an underling then turned around and smiled at everyone like a rock star acknowledging an adoring crowd.
From the Press benches we drank in his gorgeousness with silent admiration; the sharply tailored suit, the dazzling white teeth, that thick sweep of unlikely hair. If you ask me (and nobody has) I would say regular applications of chestnut rinse along with matching man-dye eyebrows are responsible for such poodle-clipped splendour. But who knows? Perhaps nature has simply blessed him in the hair department as it has so richly rewarded him elsewhere.
For Sherborne is the first lawyer the A-list call upon in matters of defamation, privacy or confidentiality. The highly remunerated legal beagle has previously represented Princess Diana and, at the Rolls Building in London this week, he was representing her son Prince Harry and Lord (Tom) Watson in their blockbuster legal case against News Group Newspapers (NGN).
Yet, as showdowns come and go, this one came and went – turning out to be less of a rumble and more of a crumble in the jungle. We were all set for eight weeks of high drama; sifting through the events of at least a dozen years ago, testing the evidence from both sides and looking forward to Harry being cross-examined for four days by the formidable Clare Montgomery KC for NGN.
Yet the case ended before it began, with an apology from the newspaper group and a settlement for Prince Harry rumoured to be somewhere north of £10million and then some.
Look. I'm happy for him. Californian mansions, polo ponies and surf boards don't come cheap. Neither do wives with a fond-ness for diamond Cartier bracelets and whose ambitions to become America's next goopy guru jampreneur millionairess have come to precisely nothing.
We drank in David Sherborne's gorgeousness with silent admiration; the sharply tailored suit, the dazzling white teeth, that thick sweep of unlikely hair, writes Jan Moir
Prince Harry had always vowed he would never settle. He saw himself as 'a crusader', he has said. Picture, the Duke of Sussex at a previous hearing last March
Depending on your opinion, Prince Harry's climbdown is either a historic victory or a crushing defeat – or perhaps a little bit of both. He got an apology, he got the dosh, he didn't risk making a fool of himself giving evidence – but was it really such a great day for justice? Both inside and outside the court, some of it was hard to stomach.
Harry didn't even turn up, for a start. And, at one point during the fraught proceedings, his legal team seemed unable to rouse him from his bed for clarification on some important deal-breaker point – and blamed the eight-hour time difference for the delay.
Then at moments of recess inside the courtroom, journalists from Left-wing outlets would trot over to pay greasy homage to Watson – or Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, as he is now known – who seemed delighted by the attention.
Poor Tom is packing a lot of junk in the trunk and seems to have put back on much of the weight he lost when writing his 2022 Lose Weight 4 Life book, which cost £18.99 and promised a 'blueprint for long-term, sustainable weight loss'. Those who bought into the Baron's foolproof diet regime - top tip: swap potato chips for celeriac or halloumi chips - and now feel cheated could always give Mr Sherborne a call.
Reading a statement outside the Rolls Building after the settlement was announced yesterday, Lord Watson said his family had been placed under 'unforgivable strain' and said: 'I wish they had left my family alone.'
Dear God. Irony-meters must have been exploding all over London. This was the man who, when he was deputy leader of the Labour Party, accused senior Conservative figures of being part of a murderous paedophile ring operating at Westminster. The ring never existed, the claims were untrue - but lives were ruined and families tormented by Watson's accusations.
Although police said sorry to Lord (Edwin) Bramall in 2016, Lord Brittan died a year earlier without being exonerated. Meanwhile, former MP Harvey Proctor has yet to receive a word of apology from Watson.
Barrister to the stars David Sherborne - standing next to client Tom Watson (left) - outside the High Court yesterday
'We were traduced as serial child-murdering paedophiles. He has never apologised to me,' he tweeted this week.
Of course, it is regrettable that Watson's privacy was invaded, but one wonders how he can even show his face in public, let alone present himself as a victim.
Up until the last minute, Prince Harry had always vowed he would never settle. He saw himself as 'a crusader', he has said. And the case, which began in 2019, was all about 'accountability' and never about the money. The intensity of his diligence in this matter does him credit. Clearly it is his life's work, his passion project: Harry again in court for his own personal Agincourt. Even if, in this case, he wasn't actually there in person, perhaps too busy dreaming up some more podcasting ideas.
A recent article in Vanity Fair claimed that Prince Harry had wanted to make a podcast series about sociopaths. He seems to believe, bear with me, that the likes of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are sociopaths – not least because they had difficult childhoods. Yet Harry is not a sociopath, even though he thinks he should be. Why? According to a source, he wondered: 'I have very bad childhood trauma. Given that my mother was essentially murdered, what is it about me that didn't make me one of these bad guys?'
It's the sort of thing that only a sociopath would ask, but sadly Prince Harry's plans to talk personality disorders ('Tell me Vlad, why are you such a nutter?') with world leaders came to nothing. And history knows that Princess Diana died in tragic circumstances; a terrible accident fuelled by a series of bad decisions and a drunk driver. Diana wasn't murdered, and it is wilful and inaccurate to say that she was – but poor, broken Harry can never be persuaded otherwise. Every now and again, when he talks like this, you catch the whisper of his unhealed grief, still an open wound after all these years.
It is inescapably one of the reasons why we were all gathered in Court 30 earlier this week, looking on as Prince Harry pursued historic allegations against two newspapers, one of which has already folded, in an industry which has since been regulated and cleaned up its act. Except that he didn't. The great crusader settled his claim instead. We were informed that 'intense' talks between the two sides had been going on for days. Now I understand why David Sherborne was in such a jolly mood from the get-go, although with some people it is always hard to tell the difference between being pleased and being pleased with oneself.
Repeatedly asking for the proceedings to be delayed, Mr Sherborne was whisking on and off his horsehair wig with a practised flourish. Even from the back of the court you could see the flash of his nuggety silver cufflinks and feel his bubbling self-delight.
Honestly, I could quite happily have watched him perform for eight weeks – but in this case, that pleasure was sadly denied.
