The Telegraph.

It's the final stop of our daily tea on the road tour, and we're in beautiful, sunny,

Worthing for what promises to be a right royal roundup by the seaside.

We're joined by the renowned royal experts Phil Dampier and

Lady Colin Campbell to take in everything from the highs of the King's US visit to the lows of the

latest nonsense from Harry and Megan. Welcome to this Daily Tea special by the Sea in Worthing with me

Camilla Tomini and And me, Tim Stanley.

Thank you.

So, Phil, you and I have done many royal tours together, haven't we?

We've been around the world together.

And there's a very good kind of ice-breaking question from a chap in the audience called,

Tony, how much off-the-record information do journalists receive and how is it used?

Now, we could go on for hours about that in the political sphere, but in the

royal sphere it's significant, isn't it? Because sometimes you simply can't name your sources, Phil.

No, I think it varies from, it varies from subject to subject. So if you're a crime reporter,

for example, it's now very, very difficult because of all the problems we've had in recent years

with phone hacking and things like that since then. I know that a lot of the crime reports, they can't talk to police anymore. They're not allowed to have contacts. It's very difficult. On the royal front, it's always been very difficult. The Buckingham Palace, they used to have this phrase, never complain, never explain. Sometimes they wouldn't answer your questions and that spoke volume,

so you had to sort of make sure that you were, you know, confident of your sources.

But it has changed a lot over the years.

But if I get a no comment to me, that's good enough.

You know, that confirms.

If they don't deny something, then I think, okay, fair enough, that's right. And there's an old adage of journalism that sometimes you can make one call too many, and sometimes that's the first call you make. So if you're very sure of your information, you don't want to give the palace too much opportunity to obfuscate, and they'll take a tiny little aspect of the story and say, well, that's not

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