Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney are set to go head to head in the High Court so here’s all you need to know about the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case.
What is sure to be an explosive libel trial begins today, Tuesday May 10, as Vardy is suing Rooney in a High Court trial that could cost £3 million, according to the Daily Mail.
How the ‘Wagatha Christie’ Who-Done-It Started
It’s a modern-day story of betrayal and slander – back in October 2019 the 36-year-old wife of Footballer Wayne Rooney took to social media to accuse fellow WAG (Wife and Girlfriend) Vardy of leaking stories about her to the press.
In the Twitter post on October 9 Rooney explained she took on the case of getting to the bottom of who was informing members of the press about her private posts and information. Rooney said she came up with a plan to ‘prove’ who was to blame by ‘blocking everyone from viewing my account expect one’,
Then Rooney apparently planted ‘false stories’ on her account and they ended up splashed in the press. After her investigation Rooney came up with the conclusion it was allegedly Vardy who was the culprit. Due to her extensive case to get to the ‘bottom of it’ Rooney was then dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’ in the press – a play on British crime novelist Agatha Christie and wives and girlfriends of footballers being informally called WAGs.
Vardy Claps Back
After Rooney ‘exposed’ the culprit the then-pregnant wife of the Leicester City striker, Jamie Vardy, clapped back at the accusation with an emotional Instagram post in which she said she was ‘at a loss to why she [Rooney] would do this’ and added she would be taking legal advice.
In the post she wrote: ‘As I have just said to you [Rooney] on the phone, I wish you had called me if you thought this.
‘I never speak to anyone about you, as various journalists who have asked me to over the years can vouch for. If you thought this was happening you could have told me and I could have changed passwords to see if it stopped.
‘Over the years various people have had access to my Insta and just this week I found out I was following people I didn’t know and have never followed myself. I’m not being funny but I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you?’
Of course the one place who would actually know the truth of the source, The Sun, is unable to confirm who their sources are – as would be any journalist or media publication in a similar position – and on October 9, 2019, a Sun spokesperson said: ‘Like all reputable media organisations, we don’t comment on sources.’
Was it the agent?
Although Vardy vehemently denies she had a part in the leaking or the stories in April this year, according to The Independent, Vardy ‘appears to accept’ that her agent, Caroline Watt, was the source of leaked stories.
In written submissions, David Sherborne (Rooney’s representative) said that Vardy’s new statement ‘suggests Ms Watt was the source of the leak but claims that [Vardy] “did not authorise or condone her”’.
‘It now appears … that she too ‘believes’ that Ms Watt is the source,’ Sherborne added. ‘The collapse of Ms Vardy’s case over the last day has been remarkable.
‘As of the evening of April 27 2022, in an abrupt change of position to her pleaded case since the outset, Ms Vardy appears now to accept Ms Rooney’s case: that Caroline Watt, Ms Vardy’s close friend and PR, was the conduit by which stories from the defendant’s private Instagram account were leaked to The Sun through her access via Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
However, Watt has been described to be in a ‘fragile’ state and ‘not fit’ to appear in court.
The High Court Trial
The trial, which is being held at the High Court in London, will begin today, Tuesday May 10, and is scheduled to last for six days and a judgment on the case is expected at a later date.
