DAY 29 - Andy Coulson was concerned about the low quality of kiss and tell stories appearing in the News of the World, the phone hacking trial heard today.

In an email read out at the Old Bailey, the News of the World editor complained to two senior colleagues that the redtop title was “scraping bottom of barrel.”

Mr Coulson – whose NOTW landed a string of exclusive kiss and tells in the first years of his editorship – wrote on 21 April 2006: “We still have an appalling lack of kiss and tells… we are scraping bottom of barrel with opera girls, calum [reality TV star Calum Best]… where are the new names?”

Mr Coulson’s counsel Timothy Langdale QC, raised the email while cross-examining Richard Scott, a detective from the Metropolitan Police’s phone hacking inquiry, Operation Weeting.

In a later email referring to Mr Best, dated 20 May 2006, Mr Coulson had told a fellow NOTW journalist: “Do his phone.”

Yet, Mr Langdale pointed out, the police had not originally found the kiss and tell email during searches of News International’s archive.

Pressed on the issue, Detective Constable Richard Scott accepted that it had been a “mistake” for the 130 keyword searches he requested not to have included: “Calum”.

He also agreed with Mr Langdale’ suggestion that Mr Best had not been hacked after Mr Coulson had written: “Do his phone” (though he had been targeted on an earlier occasion).

Appearing as a witness, Sir Michael Peat, private secretary to Prince Charles from 2002 to 2011, said he and senior courtiers “understood” that royal staff or police officers might sell copies of the Green Book containing the phone numbers of the Royal Family.

Sir Michael told the trial: “It was a widely distributed document and we were of the view that there was a substantial risk that this document would get into the hands of those for whom it was not intended.”

Fifteen royal directories were found at the home of the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman when he was arrested for phone hacking in August 2006.

Mr Goodman has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office by bribing police officers. Mr Coulson, who edited the News of the World between 2003 and 2007, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to hack phones.

The other five defendants too deny all charges. The case continues.