Prince Harry Used the Facebook Alias ‘Spike Wells’ to Message Female Journalist

Prince Harry had a secret alter ego on Facebook — and used it to slide into a journalist’s messages.

The detail comes from journalist Charlotte Griffiths, who shared her unlikely friendship with the royal, 41, in a first-person essay the Daily Mail published on Wednesday, July 8. Griffiths, who first met Harry at a Hampshire shooting weekend in December 2011, recalled that the prince had “his own set of keys” to a friend’s Chelsea property and “often stayed there (rather than at the Palace) during time off from the Army.”

When Griffiths arrived at a house party there in June 2012, she wrote that Harry “greeted me at the door with an enthusiastic hug and led me downstairs” to a basement recording studio where friends were “boozing, dancing, and generally misbehaving.”

However, it was after their first meeting that the funniest detail emerged. “As I drove my VW Golf home that evening, the Facebook Messenger app on my mobile phone pinged with a friend request from a certain ‘Spike Wells,'” Griffiths wrote. Confused about who was reaching out, she got a message clearing things up: “It’s H… in case u were confused by name and picture!! X”

Griffiths also revealed some of the playful nicknames traded that weekend. ‘At one stage, I also tried calling him Harold,'” she wrote. “It was the nickname of my stepbrother Harry at the time, so it popped into my head.”

Harry, however, wasn’t having it — Griffiths said “he was quick to point out” that “‘Harold’ was already a nickname reserved by his brother,” referring to Prince William.

“I rather lamely settled on ‘Mr Mischief,'” she shared in the article. “It seemed to fit. He was undeniably mischievous, and back then it was easy to see it as part of his charm.”

Griffiths painted an overwhelmingly warm picture of the prince during that era, describing him as “quite the live wire: Boisterous, charming, and overflowing with a (sometimes excessive) degree of self-confidence,” according to the essay.

She also recalled a tender, low-key moment during a movie night, writing that Harry “shuffled over to my beanbag, got under the blanket I was sitting under, and put his arm around me,” adding, “there was nothing particularly romantic about the sweet gesture.”

Griffiths said she kept these stories private for years, but decided to revisit them after her name surfaced during Harry’s legal battle against the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. Looking back, she wrote that the memories offer a glimpse of a very different prince — long before royal rifts, memoirs and courtroom battles transformed his public image.

Harry accused Associated Newspapers of acquiring private information through illegal means, including hacking his phone, but the case was dismissed on July 7, per In Touch.