The Royal Family are facing huge embarrassment, with police continuing to question the Royal Editor of The News of The World and the looming prospect of a trial which could expose sensational royal secrets.

Meanwhile, a TV journalist close to William and Harry has revealed the inside story of the suspicions which prompted the police investigation.

On the day one of the three men arrested was bailed at a London police station, it's been revealed that the investigation began when Tom Bradby, the former Royal Correspondent of ITN (now the news station's Political Editor), became suspicious that details relating to a private message he'd left on the mobile phone of a Clarence House official was published in the News of The World. Bradby enjoys a good relationship with William and Harry, and was the reporter chosen to accompany Harry for a TV documentary highlighting his work in Lesotho.

Speaking on Channel Four News this lunchtime, Bradby explained how suspicions were first raised:

"Well basically, what happened, I was supposed to have a private meeting with William on the Monday, one week, and on the Sunday before the details not only of the meeting but of exactly what we were going to be discussing pitched up in the News of The World."

"And I was pretty shocked about that, so when William and I got together we basically sat there and discussed 'look, how on earth could this have got out', because we worked out that only he and I and two other people very close to him had known about it."



"There was then something else that appeared about him visiting a Harley Street knee surgeon the following Sunday which, again, was known by an incredibly tight number of people."

"And basically we worked out that something was going on, something must have been going on, and we basically worked out that it probably was somebody breaking into mobile answering machine messages."



"And his chief of staff, a former SAS officer, decided 'OK, look if this is affecting us it could affect other people as well'. He called in the police and basically they discovered that not only did it affect them but it affected all kinds of people — dozens of celebrities, Cabinet Ministers — and so the investigation widened quite considerably."