Vardy loses Wagatha Christie battle against Rooney after trial branded embarrassing

Rebekah Vardy has lost the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial she brought against Coleen Rooney.

The wives of two ex-England strikers Jamie Vardy and Wayne Rooney were locked in a court battle which dominated national headlines in recent months.

It came after Mrs Rooney carried out a ‘sting operation’ in 2019 and accused Mrs Vardy of leaking ‘false stories’ about her private life to the press.

Mrs Vardy denied this and sued for libel to ‘clear her name’ after a social media post from Mrs Rooney detailing her accusations went viral.

Mrs Rooney defended the claim, arguing it was ‘substantially true’ and in the public interest, and now a judge has ruled in her favour.

In her ruling, Mrs Justice Steyn said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, ‘undertook the direct act’ of passing the information to The Sun.

But she added: “Nonetheless, the evidence… clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.

The judge added: “In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.”

talkSPORT host Simon Jordan recently delivered a stinging rant about the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial, asking Jamie Vardy and Wayne Rooney to ‘stop funding this nonsense’.

The two footballers became involved in the proceedings over differing claims about Rebekah’s behaviour at Euro 2016.

Jordan said: “I have desperately tried to turn the television off every time I’ve seen the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial.

“My partner works in the media, she works in news, so she’s having to cover some of this stuff.

“Each of us sit there and say, ‘What are these two ghastly women actually doing?’

“I think what it means for their two husbands is that they should sit there for a second and say, ‘Ladies – we’re going to stop funding this nonsense, pack it in, enough now, it’s embarrassing, it’s unnecessary!’

“It’s sad that we’re seeing this kind of thing occupy space and time. These two women need to grow up and realise there are far more pressing things than their egos, their narcissistic views of the world and what they think they’re entitled to.

“If it were my wife, I’m not sure she would get very far out the door in terms of launching court cases about ‘who said what about who’.”