A member of the Royal Family was blackmailed after two men filmed his senior aide snorting cocaine and accusing his boss of performing a gay sex act on him, a jury was told yesterday.

Ian Strachan, 31, and Sean McGuigan, 41, threatened to make the video and audio files public unless they were paid £50,000, it was claimed. The men were said to have made eight hours of recordings featuring the royal’s “right-hand man” making “scandalous and disparaging remarks” about members of the Royal Family.

In what is the first blackmail case involving a member of the Royal Household since 1891, neither the royal, who is married, nor his aide can be named for legal reasons.

The Old Bailey was told that the defendant’s files showed the aide, known only as Witness D, claiming that the royal, Witness A, had performed oral sex on him on the kitchen floor during a private party. He also said he saw a member of the Royal Family “waving his willy around” in a lavatory.

Other footage featured the aide using a Harrods store card to cut up and take cocaine, which he kept in one of the royal’s official business envelopes, it was claimed.

During the first day of the trial, Mark Ellison, QC, for the prosecution, said the men made the video recordings of the aide, whom they deeply disliked, while he was drunk or high on drugs early last year.

After downloading the clips to a computer they “hawked” the “salacious” files to tabloid newspapers and the publicist Max Clifford between March and July, Mr Ellison said. Despite meeting a number of royal reporters and showing them the files they failed to broker a deal and so turned their attentions to the royal, the man “most likely to be damaged and embarrassed by the public revelation of the files”.

Mr Ellison continued: “There were three audio files of the man apparently asserting that the member of the Royal Family who employed him had performed an act of oral sex on him.”

On July 18 the royal’s personal assistant received a call from one defendant asking to speak to her boss, Mr Ellison said. When she refused, the caller said in a “threatening” manner: “If he knows what’s good for him he will ring me back.”

A few weeks later Mr McGuigan called the office to express his concerns about the aide and say that he had the best interests of Witness A at heart. He was invited to bring the computer files to the royal’s trusted employee in France, but Mr Mc-

Guigan refused because he had to attend a rehabilitation unit. When the royal’s member of staff tried to “call his bluff” by suggesting that he destroy the files, Mr McGuigan agreed.

The prosecution claims that Mr Strachan then telephoned the member of staff to say that they wanted £50,000 to prevent them from honouring a £100,000 deal with a newspaper.

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