It was the showbiz court case that set tongues wagging across the country. But despite a verdict in the Wagatha Christie trial, the drama is far from over.
Rebekah Vardy – who, in July, lost the libel case she brought against Coleen Rooney – is once again claiming she was not the one who leaked stories to the press about her former friend, and insists that she was framed.
After a string of false tales about her private life made their way into the tabloids for just over two years from September 2017, Coleen, 36, infamously set up a sting operation to discover whom of her Instagram followers was
the mole – which, due to her marriage to former England football star Wayne Rooney, saw her dubbed "Wagatha Christie".
In a statement released in October 2019, Coleen revealed that she had blocked everybody but Rebekah from her Instagram stories to see if they would be shared with the media. When The Sun published the fake articles – including how she had travelled to Mexico to look into baby "gender selection" treatment, her plan to revive her TV career and the flooding of her basement – Coleen claimed she knew it was Rebekah who was behind it all.
Now, in a documentary series Vardy vs Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, Rebekah, 40 – who was to pay 90 percent of Coleen's court costs, though to be £1.5 million, after losing the case at the High Court maintains her innocence, and says she was set up.
"I wonder how easy it would be to potentially set someone up in a way that makes it look like that’s the only person who’s seen those [leaked Instagram] posts?” the mother-of-five, who is married to Wayne’s former England teammate Jamie Vardy, pondered in the film. “I just find it absolutely incredible to this day that she said no one else knew about this. The irony is that since I was removed as a follower, stories have been coming thick and fast about the Rooneys.”
In another clip from the show, Rebekah is seen ranting, “I have zero tolerance for this bull***t,” adding, “I just find the whole thing really f***ing bizarre.” In other parts of the documentary, she discusses how she was seven months pregnant and on holiday in Dubai with her husband when Coleen made the accusations on Twitter and Instagram.
“At the time I felt physically sick. I think it must have been the biggest panic attack,” said former I’m A Celebrity! contestant Rebekah – who revealed in 2020 how the stress of the dispute caused her to have severe anxiety attacks and end up “in hospital three times”. “I was totally shocked. What to do next? That’s the million-dollar question. I couldn’t understand why someone would do that. Why someone would do that knowing someone’s vulnerable, knowing the impact something like that is going to cause. It’s going to cause a s*** storm – a massive one – and that it did.”
She added, “The first time I read about the flooded basement was in the Daily Mail online. I love how I get blamed for that one, incredible. If I had been selling stories, where are the messages saying, ‘Give this to The Sun’? ‘Make sure I get paid for this’... Where are they? There aren’t any – because they don’t exist.”
