One of two men alleged to be involved in a gay-sex-and-drugs blackmail plot against a minor member of the Royal Family will appear in court this week.

Ian Strachan was arrested with Sean McGuigan in a police sting operation in Central London last month after reportedly demanding £50,000 not to release a video which, they claimed, showed the individual engaged in an act of oral sex and suggested that the same person had supplied cocaine to an aide.

The men, aged 30 and 40, appeared initially at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on September 13, each charged with one count of blackmail. The hearing was held in camera and never reported, and the judge issued an order forbidding publication of any detail that could identify victims or witnesses.

Scotland Yard confirmed yesterday that the two men were remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on December 20. This week’s hearing is an application for bail. It will be heard in private by a judge in chambers.

Speculation as to the identity of the member of the Royal Family was rife yesterday after The Sunday Times broke the story. Given that the alleged blackmailers’ demand was for only £50,000, it is unlikely that the victim is a prominent member of the Royal Family. Buckingham Palace declined to comment yesterday. “It’s a matter for the police,” a spokeswoman said.

According to reports, the alleged blackmailers first contacted the Royal Household on August 2. One of the men claimed to have evidence suggesting that a royal aide had in his possession an envelope containing cocaine that had been supplied by a Royal Family member, whose personal crest was embossed on the paper.

The man claimed to have two pieces of damning video evidence: an aide snorting cocaine supposedly supplied by the individual, and an aide giving oral sex to the same person.

The caller left his mobile phone number and asked for the person to call back. Reports say that a senior legal adviser to the Royal Family contacted the blackmailers and agreed with them that they would show him the video before he handed over the money. At the same time, it is said that the Royal Household contacted Scotland Yard’s kidnap and blackmail unit, which immediately put detectives on the case.

Police set up a sting operation in a room at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane on September 11 and lured the alleged blackmailers along to show their video in the belief that they would walk away with £50,000.

The men believed they were showing the video to a member of staff; however, he was an undercover CID officer. The meeting was secretly filmed by other officers in an adjoining room, and the two men were arrested. The video is said to contain other unsubstantiated allegations concerning other members of the Royal Family, including the Queen.

Last night, however, Giovanni di Stefano, a lawyer based in Rome who said that he is representing Mr Strachan, cast doubt on the claims. He said: “At no time has my client ever contacted the Royal Household. There is no video of any member of the Royal Family or in fact anyone, committing a sexual act on anyone. There is an allegation from an aide of a member of the Royal Family against two members of the Royal Family, not one.”

When the two men made their first brief court appearance, to be remanded in custody until a full trial, the hearing went unreported. The decision to hold it in camera, which means that the press and public are excluded, is believed to have followed an application from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Younger members of the Queen’s extended family — and there are now a great many — have caused the monarch much embarrassment in recent years, in part because of a sometimes free association with drink and drugs.

The 81-year-old head of State once admitted in a television documentary that it was hard these days for younger members of the family to live up to her own standards of duty and propriety. Unlike her, many of them had not been born to it.

The Crown and the courts

— In 1870 the Prince of Wales — later to be Edward VII — voluntarily appeared as a witness in a divorce case when Lady Mordaunt falsely said that he was one of her lovers

— He appeared again in 1891 as a witness in what became known as the Great Baccarat Scandal, an accusation of slander arising from alleged cheating at a card game

— His son, the future George V, sued for libel after a newspaper accused him of bigamy. He did not appear in court, but sent a statement insisting that he was legally married to Queen Mary

— In 2002 the trial of Paul Burrell on charges of stealing items from Diana, Princess of Wales, collapsed when the Queen suddenly remembered he had told her he had taken the items for safe-keeping

— That year the Princess Royal became the first member of the Royal Family to be convicted of a criminal offence when she pleaded guilty to a charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act that one of her animals bit two children in Windsor Great Park

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