A picture exclusive which is three years’ old

The Sun tabloid today flashed a front-page royal exclusive – a story about Princes William and Harry having a boozy night out at a trendy nightclub in London.

The main photo showed Harry canoodling with pretty blonde Natalie Pinkham, while, as The Sun puts it, “saucily groping her boob with one hand”. There were also other photos.

The story – headlined ‘Dirty Harry’ - indicated that this royal party was a recent event, implicating that Harry was cheating on his girlfriend Chelsy Davy.

However later in the day the Guardian ran a story that the photographs of Harry groping and kissing Natalie are three years old and were not taken this summer. This was confirmed by Clarence House, which is also bemused as to how the photographs came to be published as Natalie, the owner of the snaps, did not give her permission for them to be printed.

Palace officials also said that the party took place at the Purple nightclub in Sept 2003 and not at Boujis this summer.

This timeline solves one problem – for Harry – as it was before he started dating Chelsy. That removes the innuendo that he was cheating her.

However other questions remain, especially for The Sun – such as their motive in publishing this old news/photos; as to where they got the photos from; and if they had knowingly breached media ethics by running this falsehood.

It is now actually up to the royal family if they want to take this further. They can of course lodge a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission. For starters, they have asked The Sun to correct their story. Let’s see if the tabloid does that.