Lawyers return to court in dispute over amount of legal costs to be paid from ‘Wagatha Christie’ case
Coleen Rooney has claimed she ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8m from her high-profile libel battle with Rebekah Vardy, the high court has been told.
Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, lost the legal action in July 2022 after she sued Rooney for libel in what became known as the “Wagatha Christie” case.
Continue reading...Producer says trial asked questions about boundaries between privacy and celebrity and what it is to be a Wag
A play about the “Wagatha Christie” trial is to be staged in the West End by the producers behind Agatha Christie’s seminal drama Witness for the Prosecution.
Vardy v Rooney: the Wagatha Christie Trial, adapted from the original high court transcripts by Liv Hennessy and directed by Lisa Spirling, brings the legal battle between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney to life for one night only this autumn.
Continue reading...Poldark creator among writers and film-makers lining up to reconstruct spat between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney
A big-budget drama featuring major characters in the Wagatha Christie case is to join the slew of documentaries already in production, as the race to bring to the small screen the rancorous details of the high court battle that ended on Friday hots up.
The row between two high-profile footballers’ wives, which ended last week when the judge ruled in favour of Coleen Rooney, is to be turned into television serial by one of Britain’s leading screenwriters. Debbie Horsfield, who adapted Poldark for the 2015-19 BBC series, is to write a drama chronicling the notorious public row between Rebekah Vardy, wife of leading Leicester goal scorer Jamie Vardy, and Coleen Rooney, wife of Wayne, the renowned former England player and, until last month, manager of Derby County.
Continue reading...Rebekah Vardy probably isn’t buzzing at the ruling, a character assassination that has left her well and truly stung by libel
Oscar Wilde, Barbra Streisand, and now – Rebekah Vardy. When news broke that Vardy had lost her libel case against Coleen Rooney, she joined this heady roster of celebrities who have launched brain-bogglingly misguided and self-wounding legal cases. Like Wilde – who sued the Marquess of Queensberry for revealing his homosexuality – Vardy went to court to deny something that a rock could see was true: she’d passed on private stories about Rooney to the press. And like Streisand – who sued a website for featuring an image of her house, thereby drawing the world’s attention to it – she believed going to court was the best way to control her image. She was wrong.
Vardy traded private details of her husband’s colleagues and their wives in the hope of currying positive coverage in the media. And because of that, Mrs Justice Steyn delivered a verdict that was even more of a character assassination than Vardy’s own memorable description of Rooney to a Daily Mail journalist: “Arguing with Coleen Rooney would be as pointless as arguing with a pigeon: you can tell it that you are right and it is wrong, but it’s still going to shit in your hair.” Well, Rebekah, you’re covered in shit now.
Continue reading...Roy Hodgson was concerned Rebekah Vardy’s career was distracting Euro 2016 squad, ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial hears
Wayne Rooney asked Jamie Vardy if his wife could cut back on her media activities during the Euro 2016 football tournament because it was causing “distractions” for the England team, the high court has heard.
Rooney told the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial that the then-England manager Roy Hodgson and assistant manager Gary Neville were both concerned that Rebekah Vardy’s decision to write a column for the Sun during the contest was disrupting the squad.
Continue reading...Rooney says she did not tell anyone about months-long sting operation on Instagram
Coleen Rooney has said Rebekah Vardy’s private WhatsApp messages were “just evil”, as she finished giving evidence in the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.
The court has previously heard that Vardy and her agent, Caroline Watt, had lengthy WhatsApp exchanges about Rooney’s personal life, in which Rooney was allegedly branded a “nasty bitch” and a “cunt”.
Continue reading...Lawyer for Coleen Rooney suggests Vardy is trying to shift blame for leaking of information to Sun newspaper
Rebekah Vardy has been accused of throwing her former agent and friend “under a bus” in a last-ditch attempt to save her reputation in the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.
The footballer’s wife was accused – during the third day of a libel trial at the high court on Thursday – of deliberately destroying evidence, habitually leaking stories to the Sun newspaper, and trying to shift the blame on to her adviser Caroline Watt.
Continue reading...Coleen Rooney lawyer reads from 2004 tabloid interview in which Rebekah Vardy described singer’s ‘manhood’
Rebekah Vardy has said she deeply regrets making unflattering personal remarks about Peter Andre in a newspaper interview, as the multimillion pound “Wagatha Christie” libel trial against Coleen Rooney got under way at the high court.
The trial between the two footballer’s wives is taking place in a wood-panelled Victorian-era courtroom in central London that has heard many important cases over the years – but this could be the first where physiological matters were discussed at such length.
Continue reading...Vardy is suing Rooney for libel over allegation that Vardy leaked stories from Rooney’s private Instagram account
Rebekah Vardy said she would “love” to leak stories about Coleen Rooney to the media, according to messages disclosed at the high court.
The court filings suggest Vardy and her former agent Caroline Watt had an ongoing relationship with reporters at the Sun newspaper and discussed at length how to leak stories to the tabloid.
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