Prince Harry: I couldn't trust anybody due to phone hacking

Prince Harry has accused tabloid newspapers of hacking his voicemails when he was a teenager, saying it made him feel he "couldn't trust anybody".

In a witness statement released in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), he said the press had also cast him as a "cheat" and a "thicko".

Harry, who is giving evidence in court, said he had played up to headlines when young, leading to a "downward spiral".

He claims journalists unlawfully gathered information, which MGN denies.

By appearing in the witness stand, Harry has become the first senior royal to give evidence in a court of law since Edward VII in 1891.

In his written statement issued as he appeared at the High Court in London, Prince Harry accused the tabloid press of casting members of the Royal Family into roles and creating an "alternative and distorted version of me".

"They then start to edge you towards playing the role or roles that suit them best and which sells as many newspapers as possible, especially if you are the 'spare' to the 'heir'", he said.

"You're then either the 'playboy prince', the 'failure', the 'drop out' or, in my case, the 'thicko', the 'cheat', the 'underage drinker', the 'irresponsible drug taker'..."

The duke also said stories he believes originated from hacking not only caused security concerns, but damaged his relationships.

"I felt that I couldn't trust anybody, which was an awful feeling for me especially at such a young age," he said.

In his statement, he also:

His statement is critical of the broader tabloid press, while there are also specific claims levelled against the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People.

Harry alleges about 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010 contained information gathered using unlawful methods, and 33 of these have been selected to be considered in the court case.

Under cross-examination, Andrew Green KC, representing MGN, put to the duke that some stories were written by Mirror Group newspapers as follow-ups to articles in rival publications.

But the duke said journalists were "desperate for anything royal" and "any element of our private lives is interesting to the public".

"Just because there was a story which came out previously doesn't mean there weren't attempts to take the story further," he told the court.

Harry was also asked about an article about him having Sunday lunch in a gastro pub on London's Fulham Road, which appeared in the Daily Mirror's 3am celebrity gossip column in September 2000.

The Daily Mirror said a photographer had been tipped off about the lunch, but in his witness statement the prince said he did not know how anyone would have known about the visit.

"I always found these kind of 'coincidences' to be odd," he said.

Harry also said in his statement he believed he was first given a mobile phone when he started at Eton, in 1998.

In court, Mr Green said if this was the case, a 1996 Daily Mirror article, which is among those being considered by the judge, could not have involved any hacking of his mobile phone.

In response, Prince Harry told the court that his security at school had a separate room with a landline - and his complaint about the article is that it is inexplicable how the newspaper got the information.

Harry said that journalists had caused a lot of pain and upset, and asked if he was in court to "put a stop to this madness", he replied: "That is my hope."

The duke is one of four people bringing claims against the publisher, alongside Coronation Street actors Michael Turner - known professionally as Michael Le Vell - and Nikki Sanderson, as well as Fiona Wightman, the ex-wife of the comedian Paul Whitehouse.

The claimants allege unlawful methods were used to obtain information for stories and say senior executives must have known about it and failed to stop it, which MGN denies.