NO delay exposing these snaps

Meghan said the Press had ‘created’ news about her father Thomas Markle and suggested she had ‘lost’ her father for ever as a result of the wrangles.

Speaking about Mr Markle’s notorious collaboration with paparazzi photographers, she claimed: ‘The tabloids had apparently known for a month or so [about the staged pictures] and decided to hold until the Sunday before our wedding because they wanted to create drama, which is also a key point in all this; they don’t report the news — they create the news.’

at no stage did Oprah test these claims. If she had done so, she would have discovered a very different version of events. One in which the facts are far more compelling.

It began during the last week of March 2018, when photographs of Mr Markle began to appear in British newspapers. They had been taken in the Mexican border town of Rosarito, where the former hollywood lighting director lives in retirement.

The pictures showed Mr Markle, who until this point had said very little about his daughter’s forthcoming wedding, studying a book called Images Of Britain. The inference was clear: he was reading up on his daughter’s new home country.

The following month, two further sets of photos were published. They showed the portly american working out with weights and being measured up by a tailor. These, it was reported, were proof that Mr Markle was not just getting in shape for his role as father of the bride but was also having a wedding suit made.

In all of them he appeared to be unaware the photographs were being taken.

One further picture emerged in early May, of Meghan’s father apparently in an internet cafe looking at online stories about his daughter and future sonin-law. They emerged despite Kensington Palace warning publishers to respect Mr Markle’s privacy and claiming he had been ‘harassed’ by the paparazzi. But by now alarm bells were beginning to sound about the pictures and how they had been obtained. The Mail on Sunday suspected they had been set up, and secured CCTV footage from the internet cafe showing Mr Markle and a photographer together. here was proof that the two had collaborated. and, importantly, it seemed to undermine the Palace’s official line. That footage was secured on May 12 and published within 24 hours. Far from ‘sitting’ on the story, the paper published it immediately.