Rebekah Vardy – live: Coleen Rooney’s triumphant messages to friends after ‘Wagatha Christie’ reveal post

For three days Ms Vardy was put through her paces in the witness box at her trial against Coleen Rooney. Ms Rooney’s hotshot lawyer David Sherborne, famed for representing A-listers from Johnny Depp to Hugh Grant, had a particularly combative style and accused Ms Vardy on multiple occasions of “lying” under oath.

“You are making this up aren’t you Mrs Vardy?” and “That’s a lie isn’t it?” were regular refrains.

At one point he put to the fooballer’s wife: “The reason you can’t get your story straight is because you are lying”. She defiantly replied: “No I am absolutely not lying.”

In one unfortunate moment, which was pounced upon by Mr Sherborne, Ms Vardy - referring to a message exchange with her agent Caroline Watt - said: “If I’m honest I can’t remember.”

“I’d much rather you are honest because you are sitting in a witness box in a trial,” Mr Sherborne quipped.

Coleen Rooney posted triumphant messages to her friends after she accused Rebekah Vardy’s account of being behind leaks of her private information to The Sun, new photos show.

In previously unseen images, Coleen Rooney told her Instagram followers “Don’t play games with a girl who can play better” after she posted her infamous ‘Wagatha Christie’ message on 9 October 2019.

She added: “After years of my personal Instagram posts getting leaked to the SUN newspaper..... I’ve finally cracked it and know exactly who’s account it is !!!!.”

Ms Rooney, 36, is being sued for defamation by Ms Vardy, 40, over the offending post. The images of Coleen Rooney’s Instagram posts were submitted as evidence to the High Court during Ms Vardy’s libel trial but were only issued to the media on Friday.

In a third image, also posted to her private Instagram on the 9 October 2019, Ms Rooney wrote: “Thanks for all the messages.... I will reply but just sky diving and at the driving range with kai... teaching training day at school. My work is done and the comeback was exactly what I expected.....other people in the public eye have had suspicions aswell of things happening to them.”

New photos, submitted to the High Court and released on Friday, show Coleen Rooney’s messages to friends after she posted her infamous ‘Wagatha Christie’ reveal post.

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 last 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”.

Rebekah Vardy told the High Court she felt “bullied and intimidated” as a witness in the libel trial against fellow footballer’s wife Coleen Rooney.

The 40-year-old finished giving evidence last Friday, three days after she first took the stand in the case which centres around Ms Vardy being accused of leaking information about Ms Rooney’s private life to the press.

Speaking in a wobbling voice at the end of her witness testimony, Ms Vardy said: “I didn’t do anything wrong and I wanted to clear my name, and I wanted it not just for me but for my family and my children.”

Her lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson, asked Ms Vardy: “How have you find the process of answering questions in this court?”

The model, who is married to Premier League footballer Jamie Vardy, replied: “Exhausting, intimidating, I feel like I’ve been builled and manipulated.”

Wayne Rooney has said that his wife Coleen has “become a different mother, a different wife” because of the stress of the ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel trial.

Speaking from the witness stand at the High Court on Tuesday, the former England captain and Derby County manager said they he and his wife “don’t want to be in this court”.

“I’ve watched my wife over the last two and a half years really struggle with everything ... becoming a different mother, a different wife,” he said.

“It’s been been very traumatic for my wife.”

Read the full story from Tuesday here:

During cross-examination, Rebekah Vardy’s lawyer Mr Tomlinson QC suggested to Ms Rooney that she had no evidence to link Ms Vardy to alleged leaks of fake private Instagram posts to the press.

He said: “You have no evidence to establish that it was Mrs Vardy who did the leaking.”

“I believe it’s come from that account and that’s what I have said from the beginning and I believe Mrs Vardy knew that this was happening,” Ms Rooney replied.

She repeated: “I believe that Mrs Vardy knew that this was happening, whether it was Mrs Vardy herself or it was someone she’s given permission to.”

Mr Tomlinson replied that “you might believe that Derby County will win the premiership”, adding: “It’s not evidence that they are going to.”

“No it’s not,” she replied.

Discussing the ‘Honda crash’ story that appeared in The Sun, Ms Rooney agreed with Mr Tomlinson that anybody who saw the damaged Honda would have known about it and that the story could have made its way to The Sun without someone seeing her private Instagram account.

Mr Tomlinson said: “This information could at any time have come to The Sun without anybody looking at your posts at all.”

“They could, yes,” she replied.

Whilst on the witness stand, Ms Vardy admitted that she knew her agent was forwarding Ms Rooney’s private information to The Sun.

Ms Vardy said under cross-examination that she “didn’t think [her agent] was passing on any new information” to the tabloid about Ms Rooney’s supposedly crashing her Honda. Ms Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne challenged Ms Vardy, saying: “You didn’t object at any stage to the fact that Mrs Watt was plainly passing on information from Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram account to Andy Hall?”

Ms Vardy responded: “I didn’t think she was passing on any new information.”

“Take the word ‘new’ out of it,” Mr Sherborne said, “Did you, or did you not, know that Mrs Watt was passing on information from Mrs Rooney’s private account?”

“She was talking to Mr Halls about information that was already being discussed,” Ms Vardy conceeded.

The fake stories posted by Ms Rooney on her private Instagram to “trap” Ms Vardy were revealed on the penultimate day of the trial.

One image showed the back of a plane seat, with the caption: “Let’s go and see what this gender selection is all about”.

That was a false story posted on 8 April 2019 about Ms Rooney travelling to Mexico to see about a procedure that could determine a baby’s sex. The story shows that only one Instagram user has seen the story - Ms Vardy’s account.

Around four months later, The Sun published a story online on 15 August 2019 with the headline “Col’s baby girl bid”. It detailed Ms Rooney’s alleged “desperate bid to have a baby girl”.

Another picture showed Ms Rooney “revealing” the basement of the Rooneys’ £20m Cheshire mansion had flooded.

The fake post showed a bottle of wine and was captioned: “Needed after today… flood in the basement of our new house… when it all seemed to be going so well.” The image, which was only seen by Ms Vardy’s account, led to an article in The Sun in October 2019.

Rebekah Vardy’s lawyer argued yesterday that the case against her was based on “conspiracy theories”.

Mr Hugh Tomlinson QC said that his client had suffered “public abuse and ridicule on a massive scale” and was entitled to “substantial damages”.

Mr Tomlinson described the arguments that Ms Vardy had a “conspiracy to delete” messages or had deleted some in a selective way as an “incredible theory”.

“There was an export of a very large number of Whatsapp messages,” he told the court.

“Why would Mrs Vardy, if she was destroying evidence, do it in that selective and complex way?” Mr Tomlinson asked.

“If she was a wicked litigant who was trying to deceive the court by getting rid of damaging evidence, the idea she would do it by getting rid of images and not text .... simply beggars belief.”