Bombs away! Prince Harry’s mission to dump ordnance on his nearest and dearest continued last night in a riveting interview with Tom Bradby of ITV.

Their explosive tete-a-tete began well for the royal escapologist who described the heart-breaking scene on 31 August, 1997, when Charles (whom he calls ‘Pa’) woke him at Balmoral. ‘Darling boy, mummy’s been in a car crash.’ Harry’s instinct was to rush to her bedside but Pa didn’t mention a hospital visit. And he kept calling him ‘darling boy’ which seemed unusual. Eventually the truth dawned and Harry immediately went into denial. He convinced himself that Diana had faked the accident to escape her hellish life.

When he reached adulthood, he arranged to be driven at high speed through the Paris tunnel where she died. Later, he learned that William had performed the same experiment in a bid to relive her final moments. This is tragic, harrowing stuff. Whole movies could be devoted to the princes’ agonised attempts to cope with their grief.

Harry seems a decent, well-meaning chap with a certain measure of charm and wit but he suffers from delusions

He added more details to the infamous bout of fisticuffs which resulted in the breaking of a royal dog-bowl. He claimed that William begged him to retaliate. ‘You’ll feel better if you hit me,’ he taunted. Harry, in a rare of moment of serenity, replied, ‘No, only you will feel better if I hit you.’ He was receiving psychiatric care at the time and this saved him from thumping his older brother. ‘If I wasn’t doing therapy sessions I would have fought back 100 per cent.’ As William left, he asked Harry to keep their bout a secret. ‘No need to tell Meg,’ he said contritely. So Harry knows just how harmful this story is and whose reputation it undermines. Maximum damage. Scorched earth. That’s his policy.

Yet he remains stubbornly convinced of his personal rectitude. Bradby suggested that his palace tittle-tattle had been ‘scathing’ but he rejected the description. ‘Nothing of what I’ve done has been with any intention to harm them or hurt them.’ He’s like a fireman entering a burning orphanage with a flame-thrower. ‘I can save you kids, just watch me spray this magic liquid around.’

He refers to Camilla rather coldly as ‘my stepmother’ or ‘certain members of the family’, and he admits that he pleaded with his father not to marry her. William took his side but Charles overlooked their wishes. ‘Certain members of the family,’ Harry goes on, ‘have decided to get in bed with the devil to rehabilitate their image.’ He suggests that Camilla leaked private conversations with the press, and that she played a ‘long game’ to win Charles ‘and ultimately the crown.’

His portrait of her as a scheming, ambitious hypocrite is new and shocking. Harry resents any words of abuse aimed at Meghan and yet he throws these toxic barbs at his father’s wife. What does he hope to achieve? Ill-temper haunts him and although he claims to be satisfied with his life in California he’s unable to mention it without aiming a shaft at somebody. ‘I am very happy. I’m very at peace,’ he says. ‘I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been. And that angers some people and infuriates others.’ But those who are truly at peace don’t dwell on the bitterness of their enemies. They have no enemies. They’re at peace.

Bradby asked if the chances of a reconciliation might improve if Harry were more discreet and he instantly shifted the responsibility to Charles and William. ‘Silence only allows the abuser to abuse so I don’t know how silence is going to make things better.’ Asked if he’d burned his bridges, he used the same ploy: blame-dodging and self-exoneration. ‘I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges.’

Bradby updated viewers on a handful of legal battles which continue behind closed doors. We learned that Harry is pursuing the Daily Mail for breaking into property and planting bugs. Pretty serious allegations. And the prince suggested that since he hasn’t been sued for defamation, the Mail must be guilty. That’s not how it works. Submissions to a court are rarely, if ever, the subject of libel proceedings. Why has no one told him this?

He seems a decent, well-meaning chap with a certain measure of charm and wit but he suffers from delusions. When others attack him, they’re being malicious. When he attacks others, he’s being ‘honest’. Had he completed a law degree and a journalism course he might have gained some insight into the two professions which appear to obsess him. His madcap ambition is to use the courts to tame and silence the British press. Alas, no journalist or lawyer has any interest in disabusing him of these sad imaginings. Barristers like nothing better than a prickly millionaire with a list of scores to settle.

After last night’s bizarre act of self-harm, he seems further than ever from the family he claims to love. He won’t sue for peace because he’s too steeped in his own sense of injury. As for the upcoming coronation, the fifth-in-line has now relegated himself to a place on the guest-list just below Gerry Adams and Bashar Al-Assad. Poor fool. He needs help. He won’t get it. Harry’s pain is now a global industry and although he can profit from it to a limited extent he’ll never gain control of the beast he has unleashed. It will consume him for the rest of his days.