Rebekah Vardy news – live: Coleen Rooney’s ex-friend cries in dock over online abuse

Rebekah Vardy is testifying about messages she sent to her agent Caroline Watt about former Leicester City player Riyad Mahrez.

In February 2018, Riyad Mahrez did not turn up to training and there was speculation in the press about what was happening at the time.

David Sherborne, Rooney’s lawyer, cross examining Vardy, said: “You message Caroline Watt at 11:26 in the morning on the 1st of February. You say Mahrez has not turned up to training again. The lads are fuming.”

In the message exchange, Watt suggests leaking the information to a sports reporter, the court heard.

Vardy told Watt: “I just dont’ want it coming back on me”, the court heard.

Sherbourne challenged Vardy in court, saying: “You pass on to Caroline Watt that inside the dressing room Mahrez’s fellow players are fuming.”

Rebekah Vardy said her comments were “speculation of bits of information that i heard and overheard and also it had been in the press before.”

She claimed: “I was gossiping about things that were already in the public demain.”

Lawyer Sherbourne asked: “Did you know or not know that the lads were fuming?”

Vardy replied: “No i didn’t know that was a fact.”

Rooney’s lawyer Sherbourne said: “It’s not that you didn’t want to do the dirty, it was that you didn’t want to be seen to do the dirty.”

Vardy replied: “The way it reads that is correct yes”

Sherbourne continued: “She was willing to do your dirty work for you.”

“In a fleeting moment yes,” Vardy admitted.

Rebekah Vardy has told the High Court that she was “just gossiping” when messaging her agent about the failure of one of her husband’s then teammates to come to training in 2018.

Coleen Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne read a message from Mrs Vardy to Caroline Watt about then Leicester City footballer Riyad Mahrez not coming to training, telling Ms Watt “the lads are fuming”.

Mrs Vardy said: “It was speculation of just bits of information that I had heard and overheard, and also read in the press before.”

She added: “Yes, it doesn’t look good there, I was gossiping about things that we already in the public domain. I was just gossiping.”

Rebekah Vardy is answering questions about a celebrity couple, Mrs F and Mr H - who were estranged.

Vardy had messaged her agent, Caroline Watt, about Mrs F’s partying behaviour, which she labelled “disgusting” in text messages.

Rebekah Vardy sent a message to her agent saying: “Oh my god. Have you seen how badly Mrs F is behaving. I’m actually disgusted with her,” the court heard.

Vardy told her agent: “Leak the story about her shagging G behind H’s back.”

Her agent replied: “I tried before but the Sun already knew about it but couldn’t prove it as usual”.

Vardy replied: “Urgh”

Watt said: “And Mr H had told them too because he knew.”

When asked about the messages, Vardy told the court: “I was just joking when I said this comment.”

Rooney’s lawyer Sherborne put to Vardy that she was annoyed that she couldn’t leak the story.

Vardy said: “No I was disgusted”.

She explained the messages saying:  “Our Whatsapps were sometimes outrageous, sometimes totally inappropriate...They don’t read very well but there is always an explanation.”

Coleen Rooney’s lawyer Sherborne questioned Rebekah Vardy about what she said in reference to a story about a woman named only as Mrs F - a “well-known celebrity” - her estranged husband Mr H and Mr G, a “well-known footballer”.

Mrs Vardy told her agent Caroline Watt that she should “leak the story about her shagging G behind H’s back”,” Mr Sherborne said.

Mrs Vardy said she was “a bit shocked and a bit disgusted about what I’d seen in the paper”.

Mr Sherborne asked whether she was so annoyed that she had instructed Ms Watt to leak a story about Mrs F allegedly cheating.

“That’s the way it reads,” she replied, adding: “Again, in context, bits of information mixed in with other bits of information. I was actually just joking about that one.”

Mrs Vardy said she was “just joking” when she discussed with her agent leaking a story about a woman allegedly cheating on her husband.

Rebekah Vardy is being asked about messages to her agent in which she asked for money from the Sun in return for a tip about Danny Drinkwater’s car crash in April 2019.

Footballer Drinkwater crashed his Range Rover through a wall on 8 April.

Rebekah Vardy messaged her agent saying she had a story about Danny Drinkwater being arrested. She told Caroline Watt that he had been drink-driving and crashed his car with two girls in it.

“He’s only just been let out of the cells last night!” Vardy wrote.

Watt suggested that she leak the information to the Sun and Vardy reminded her to get some money in return for the story tip.

Speaking about her demand for payment, Vardy told the court: “It was a fleeting thought and I haven’t considered it anymore than when I wrote it.”

She said: “I am deeply affected by drink driving.. at the time I didn’t care whether the information came out or not. It wasn’t a serious comment.”

Caroline Watt told Vardy in messages, read out to the court, that she had shared the information with a Sun reporter.

“It is something that wrongly I got involved with,” Vardy told the court, “and for that I can only apologise. But it was something that really affected me.”

She described it as “an initial reaction to something that had affected me badly in the past.”

“At the beginning, when I said I wanted paying for this, it was fleeting comment. It was something I probably considered at the time but that was it,” Vardy said.

In the message exchange, Caroline Watt tells Vardy that the Sun already knew about the crash because someone inside the police station had told the paper.

Vardy reacted with a message, saying: “F*** somebody else already tipped it.”

She tells her agent: “I am fuming that I did not give it to your earlier”.

In court, Vardy denied that she was angry that the Sun already knew about the story. “That’s not true,” she told lawyer Sherborne. “I was annoyed that I didn’t give it to Caroline earlier”.

“Why are you fuming?” Sherborne asked her.

“I don’t know”, Vardy said.

Rebekah Vardy labelled Ms Rooney a “c***” after she was unfollowed by her on Instagram, the High Court was told.

Mr Sherborne said it was Vardy’s agent Ms Watt who messaged her to inform her what had happened.

“Oh my god, you say, I just saw, what a c***t,” Mr Sherborne said, explaining that the exchange came after the alleged leak of information about Ms Rooney being in a car crash from her private Instagram.

Vardy said it was “not true” the car crash post had been leaked by Ms Watt to the Sun. Mr Sherborne said Ms Watt came up with a “lie” that her laptop had been left with “one of the girls” at her company.

Vardy has denied the suggestion it was “standard practice” for her to leak private information to The Sun via her agent.

While questioning her over an alleged leak of a story about a footballer, referred to in court only as Mr X, being unfaithful to his partner, Mr Sherborne said: “That was standard practice, wasn’t it, that you gave information to Ms Watt and she would give it to the Sun?”

“No,” she replied.

When asked if Sun reporter Andy Halls was a “good conduit” for information, she said: “No, that’s not the case. I never gave him information.”

Coleen Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne is having to do some quick thinking in court.

Rebekah Vardy has revealed the subject of a photo message in court, leaving Sherborne to react on the spot to new information. Rooney’s lawyers don’t seem to have had disclosure of the photo message in advance.

Rebekah Vardy has said that she shared a photo of an article with her agent Caroline Watt, which showed a piece about model and television personality Danielle Lloyd.

The photo came with the caption from Vardy: “She has gone and done it now, leak the Maldives stuff.”

Vardy is alleging that the message should have been phrased “leaked the Maldives stuff” and that she is referring to information Danielle Lloyd leaked herself.

One of Rooney’s legal team has done some quick google seaching and found that information about Danielle Lloyd’s Maldives honeymoon was published a few months before Vardy’s message.

Sherborne told the court about his team’s quick google searching and Vardy quipped that she knew he was quick online because he had followed her on Twitter.

Vardy has said that she was reacting to a combination of new information Lloyd shared in the article, some of which was about her Maldives honeymoon.

Rebekah Vardy told her agent she “wanted paying” for information about Danny Drinkwater leaving police custody after crashing his car, the High Court heard.

Reading texts between her and her agent, Mr Sherborne said: “You say ‘he’s only just been let out of the cells last night’ and then said you wanted paying for this.

“To which she said ‘which police station? They will need to confirm with the police station before they write it’.

“The ‘they’ she’s referring to is The Sun, isn’t it?”

Mrs Vardy confirmed “they” referred to The Sun, but, explaining the comment about being paid for information, she said: “It was a fleeting thought and one I didn’t consider any more then when I wrote it.”

“It wasn’t a serious comment,” she added.

In case you missed it..

Rebekah Vardy called Coleen Rooney “a c*** ” after being unfollowed by her on Instagram, a court has heard.

The 40-year-old took to the witness box for the second day of her libel trial against Ms Rooney, who has accused Ms Vardy of leaking “false stories” about her to the press.

Ms Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denies the allegations.

On Tuesday, Ms Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne quizzed her about messages exchanged with her agent Caroline Watt.

Coleen Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne is grilling Rebekah Vardy about whether her agent was monitoring Rooney’s Instagram account.

Caroline Watt, Vardy’s agent, had been using Rebekah Vardy’s Instagram account to look at Coleen Rooney’s posts, the court heard.

Watt and Vardy chatted between them about Rooney’s Instagram posts on private message. In one particular exchange, Rebekah Vardy messaged Watt saying: “Coleen’s Instagram, wonder if they are going for baby five.”

Watt replied with: “I already saw it, I can’t believe she’s posted it.”

The Instagram story in question was Rooney’s post about a potential gender selection for a child.

In another exchange, Caroline Watt messaged Vardy saying: “How much of an attention seeker is Coleen. No press about her post about gender selection and now she’s posting about Mexico in the hope that somebody notices.”

Rebekah Vardy replied: “Ha ha I did think that when I saw it.”

Vardy told the court that she would gossip with her agent “about lots of different things we saw”. She denied that her agent had been consistently looking at Rooney’s Instagram.