A man accused of blackmailing a member of the Royal Family with gay sex allegations told a jury he was motivated by revenge after being drugged and sexually assaulted by the man’s aide.

Giving evidence, Ian Strachan, 31, said he had filmed the royal aide taking cocaine and making lurid claims about his boss in an attempt to get him sacked.

He told the Old Bailey that he enjoyed a “jovial” relationship with the married royal, named only as Witness A, and wanted to “ingratiate” himself with him rather than blackmail him.

He claimed he wanted “expose” the royal’s member of staff, named in court as Witness D, to get him his “comeuppance” for being a “sexual predator” and using a homemade date rape drug to sexually assault him and a friend.

Mr Strachan, 31, and Sean McGuigan, 41, are accused of trying to extort £50,000 from the royal by using tapes allegedly showing witness D making a number of scandalous claims about the royal and other members of his family.

Both men deny the charges.

Jurors were told that before the blackmail attempt the men had tried to hawk the tapes to several newspapers.

Referring to a sting at the Hilton Hotel where Mr Strachan showed excerpts from eight hours of footage of the royal aide to an undercover policeman, he said: “I wanted to how that that they were getting real value for money. I also wished to ingratiate ourselves with Witness A.”

Asked by his barrister, Jerome Lynch, QC, why he had told the undercover officer about being offered money from newspapers, he said: “My ultimate aim was for D to get his comeuppance. I wanted it to look like we had given up all these offers for Witness A (the royal).”

He added in earlier conversations with the royal’s friend, whom he described as a “good lad, eccentric - off his head really”, he had offered the tapes for “absolutely zero”.

Mr Lynch asked: “Did you appreciate that publishing these stories might cause him some harm?”

Mr Strachan told the jury that he did not think people would “take it seriously.” He said that he had “serious doubts” about the truth of any of the allegations.

Mr Strachan claimed to have “cringed” when he learned that Mr McGuigan had contracted the royal’s personal assistant about the tape. He said he never made any financial demands of Witness A because he knew it could be construed as blackmail.

But he also told the jury: “If someone offered me thousands of pounds, yes, I would take it.”

The former stylist and fashion journalist admitted having lied about a law degree when trying to recover money owing to other stylists. He admitted that he may have told people he was a solicitor “in circumstances where I have been entering into a deal where someone might have been trying to take advantage of me.”

He also claimed to know other members of the Royal Family including one, referred to in the trial as Z2, who he said he played sport against him and with whom he had “frequent contact.”

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