David Furnish and Sir Elton John 'profoundly affected' by Mail targeting, court told

The filmmaker and husband of Sir Elton John has said the couple have been "profoundly affected" by not knowing how many times they were targeted by the Daily Mail, a court has heard.

David Furnish and Sir Elton are among seven people, including Prince Harry, Elizabeth Hurley and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, suing the publisher of that paper and the Mail on Sunday for breaches of privacy.

The couple's claim relates to 10 articles published between 2002 to 2015, which they say were a result of unlawful information gathering by the papers.

Their publisher, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), denies all allegations of unlawful information gathering.

In a witness statement read out at the High Court in London, Furnish said he and his partner had a long and difficult history with the Mail.

He said the paper had, despite partly moving with the times, "published countless judgemental, and narrow-minded stories" that were "clearly designed to undermine who we are and how we live our lives".

He said one story, published in December 2010, included the publication of their son's birth certificate before they had received it.

"The world had no idea we were having a baby", Furnish said, adding that the process leading up to the birth was run "like a military operation".

"For The Mail to access it before the parents themselves - it was outrageous, invasive, and upsetting. It left us asking, 'If they can get this, what else can they get?'"

Another article, from August 2015, referred to an urgent ambulance journey during which, Furnish's statement said, "I had never heard anyone in so much pain as Elton was then".

Referring to the incident, Furnish said "none of this was publicised - it was completely private".

He said at the time the couple had assumed the information in the article came from a leak "within the ambulance or hospital, somebody being indiscreet".

"Elton and I are profoundly affected by the uncertainty of not knowing how many times we were targeted, especially in relation to Elton's medicals", Furnish said.

"We still don't know what was really done to us," he added.

ANL strongly denies wrongdoing, with lawyers for the publisher previously telling the court that the claims made by Furnish and Sir Elton are "unsupported by any evidence before the court and utterly baseless".

The trial continues and is expected to end in March.