Kate Middleton

The News of the World hacked voicemail messages from Prince William to Kate Middleton, including one in which he "nearly got shot" by blank rounds in an army training exercise, a court has been told.

Transcripts of intimate and private messages left by the prince while he was training at Sandhurst military academy in which he call Kate, his future wife, "baby" and "babykins" were read to the jury in the hacking trial at the Old Bailey on Thursday.

The intercepted voicemails produced a string of exclusives for the paper including one headlined "Harry aide helps out in Sandhurst exams" and another revealing that William was out "beagling".

It is the first time the now-defunct tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has been accused of illegally intercepting the voicemails of anyone directly related to one of the royals.

Up to now it has only been known that royal household staff were hacked by the paper, leading to the conviction of the News of the World's former royal editor, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator used by the paper Glenn Mulcaire in 2007.

Transcripts of the voicemails were uncovered at the time of their arrest in 2006 but have not been revealed in public before.

The voicemails were deemed relevant and were used to make the connection between stories in the paper, internal emails and hacked voicemails.

The jury was also told of a call from Sandhurst commandant Andrew Ritchie to Prince William's private secretary Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, complaining about his antics at Prince Harry's passing out ball at the military academy.

"Jamie, good morning, It's Andrew Ritchie. I'd like to have a chat with you this morning if you could ring me back about an incident at the ball last night. I'm in the office till about 12.30pm and it would be great to hear from you before then if possible. Bye."

The jury was then shown an email from Goodman to Neil Wallis, the deputy editor and Ian Edmondson, the head of news, dated 14 April 2006.

He told them that "General Ritchie" had called about "incidents" at the ball in which "William and his group were massively drunk and upsetting other guests with their braying, hooray Henry antics".

Goodman told them that "William himself was sent upstairs to bed before the ball ended" while "another was regaling guests with an anecdote about how his wallet had been stolen by a hooker by the night before."

The jury was then shown a front-page story on the News of the World headlined "So silly Willy" with a reference to a "hooker".

"Boozy Prince William and his gang of braying pals outraged guests at Prince Harry's passing-out ball with disgraceful drunken antics," it read.

In the first voicemail transcript the jury heard, Prince William left a message telling Kate he had just finished training and told her how he had nearly got shot in an ambush on a dummy exercise.

He started by saying "Hi baby", and then went on to explain his day.

"I had a busy day today again. I've been running around the woods of Aldershot chasing shadows and getting terribly lost, and I walked into some other regiment's ambush, which was slightly embarrassing because I nearly got shot. Not by live rounds but by blank rounds, which would be very embarrassing though.

"Um, er, yeah, I'm off on exercise tomorrow morning, just for the day, and then I'm back on Saturday first thing, erm, so I probably won't be able to speak to you tomorrow night."

He then told her he might send her "a cheeky text message" because he might have his phone with him before signing off: "All right, baby, lots of love, um, speak to you soon. Bye bye."

An internal News of the World email later sent by Goodman to colleagues subsequently helped identify a resulting story for the paper, telling them "William shot in ambush".

The News of the World subsequently ran a story in the Blackadder column edited by Goodman which read "Prince William got 'shot' in a military ambush".

The other transcripts included one in which Williams addresses Kate as "babykins".

This nickname then appeared in an "exclusive" by Goodman on 12 February 2006 which went on to say that "Wills wants the girl he calls 'babykins' to be his princess".

In another voicemail, William told Kate he was going to secretly get away from Sandhurst and was hoping to get to her parents' house.

He said he was going to "try to go beagling today and then I'm going to try to come to you afterwards".

In an email shown to the jury Goodman told the then News of the World editor Andy Coulson about William's plans for beagling, noting that this is a story as leave is not allowed at Sandhurst. He added: "No leave for first five weeks, going to be dead tricky to stand up."

On a later date William called Kate and left a message telling her he is "planning on coming out about 7-ish, so I will be with you about 7.45 at the latest. Hope that's all right. Baby can't wait to see you. Lots of love and I'll speak to you later"

In an email Goodman told his then news editor Ian Edmondson: "He was due to leave 7pmish" and is planning to see Kate. "From the inf [sic] I've got, it loos like he is going to her parent's house near Reading" because his "ETA" wouldn't give him enough time to make it to her London flat."

The jury heard that Prince Harry's phone was also hacked. They were told of an unidentified male voice phoning the prince, putting on a female voice and pretending to be Chelsy Davy, his then girlfriend who was holidaying in South Africa.

"He puts on a false voice and tells how much he misses Harry," the prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told the jury, adding that he also called Harry "Ginger".

The jury were told by prosecutor Andrew Edis that another transcript was of a message left on Prince Harry's voicemail by an "unknown male message putting on female voice" and then lapsing into a normal male voice. This was later attributed to William by the News of the World.

The message refers to Harry as a "big hairy fat ginger". The transcript shown to the jury read: "Hi, it's Chelsy here. I just want to say I miss you so much and I think you're the most ... best-looking ginger I've ever seen although you really are quite ugly for a ginger but hope you're having a lovely time - I really miss you. It's lovely out here in Africa and hopefully I'll see you very soon, you big hairy fat ginger. Anyway, speak to you later."

A story in the News of the World headlined "Chelsy tears strip off Harry" included a reference to a phone call in which she told him how much she missed him and called him "Ginger". Readers were told that Harry "sees the funny side".

The trial continues.