Texts reveal how Rebekah Vardy responded to Coleen Rooney’s ‘Wagatha Christie’ post: ‘Wow that’s war’

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Louise Thomas

Editor

A court has heard how Rebekah Vardy reacted to her account being named as the one Coleen Rooney believed was leaking information to the press.

A High Court was read messages on Thursday that showed Mrs Vardy responding to the allegations at the centre of the libel trial between the footballers’ wives.

In 2019, Mrs Rooney described a “sting” operation she had carried out to try to discover who was sharing information from her Instagram with The Sun.

“It’s..... Rebekah Vardy’s account,” her social media post - which saw the wife of former England captain Wayne Rooney dubbed “Wagatha Christie” - concluded.

The court heard Mrs Vardy text her agent afterwards to say: “Wow that’s war”.

Mrs Vardy, who is married to Premier League footballer Jamie Vardy, gave evidence about the aftermath of Mrs Rooney’s post as she took the witness stand for the third day in a row.

“It’s such a blur that day”, she told the court.

The 40-year-old spoke about the days following Ms Rooney’s big reveal. “It seemed she had weaponised her fan base against me, and I was desperately trying to do something to diffuse the situation,” she told the court.

Mrs Vardy told the court that during a subsequent phone call with Ms Rooney, the latter “quite frankly revelled in my anguish and upset”.

She turned directly to Ms Rooney when she said this last comment.

Mrs Vardy has denied being the source of the leaks and is suing Ms Rooney for libel.

The trial has so far seen Mrs Vardy quizzed about messages with her agent discussing leaking - or potentially leaking - stories to the press. She has denied to the High Court that leaking information to the The Sun was “standard practice”.

She started crying in the witness stand on Thursday during questioning about whether she leaked a story about Ms Rooney’s flooded basement to The Sun, which was expected to be her final day of evidence.

Mrs Rooney is set to start giving evidence on Friday.