Rebekah Vardy recalled the “extremely cold and menacing” call she had with Coleen Rooney after confronting her about her Wagatha Christie Tweet.
In a witness statement to London’s High Court the 40-year-old, who married Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy in 2016, claimed Rooney’s sting operation was a “ploy” to “generate sympathy for herself”. Rooney, the wife of former England star Wayne Rooney, publicly accused Vardy of sharing fake stories she uploaded to a private Instagram story in October 2019.
The posts, which went on to make stories in The S*n, included the 36-year-old travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure and about a flood in her basement. In her statement, Vardy said she was in Dubai at the time of the viral post and was alerted to it by her agent.
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She said: “[Rooney] didn’t answer immediately and then called me back off an unknown number. I felt like she was recording the whole call.
"I hoped that, once I had told her that it was not me, then she would simply fix this. Instead, she accused me of leaking stories about her for years.
"I asked her to send me the stories that she thought I had leaked and she said that I knew exactly what I had done. I asked her how she could do that to someone who was heavily pregnant and she responded that I had been leaking stories about her when she was pregnant.
"She told me that she wanted to make me feel paranoid the way she had felt paranoid. I still remember her tone on that telephone call really vividly.
"It was extremely calculated and cold and she showed no remorse even though I was very upset. I found it very chilling and quite menacing."
Vardy said Whatsapp messages with Coleen showed the “same cold, proud tone” and were “sarcastic and totally indifferent to the enormity of what she had just done”. Vardy said: “I genuinely think that she did not care at all about the consequences for me and my family and that she was somehow enjoying all the praise and attention that she was getting as a result of her so-called ‘sting operation’.
"I feel like it was a ploy by her to turn the press and public against me to generate sympathy for herself."
Vardy's barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told the court earlier today that an analysis of Rooney's phone showed she had screenshotted photos of herself mocked up as fictional detectives Agatha Christie and Miss Marple, and in a sequence from Scooby Doo. He said: "She wasn't, at the time of publication, congratulating herself in having exposed a matter of public interest, she was revelling in the attention and the Wagatha Christie story."
Vardy was, this afternoon, grilled over a 2004 News of the World kiss-and-tell about pop singer Peter Andre with Coleen Rooney. In written submissions, Vardy admitted she "authorised or approved" her agent Caroline Watt to give information to journalists “on occasions where she had strong views about the conduct in question”.
Vardy was asked by Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne if it was “wrong” to pass on private information, to which she replied: “Yes.” Mr Sherborne then handed her a print out of an article with the headline: “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes”.
He asked Vardy: “Did you feel particularly strongly about the size of his manhood that it should be made public?” Vardy replied: “It was something I was forced to say.”
She accused her ex-husband of forcing her to do the piece, and said the fee was paid into his bank account. Vardy was then asked about a Whatsapp exchange with Watt where she sent an image of a woman and discussed “leaking” a story about how they had been photoshopped.
The photo is not possible to view as all the media files from her conversations with Watt have been deleted, the court heard. Vardy is said to have messaged Watt: “This makes me puke, does she not realise she’s part of the problem, photoshopping pictures that make her look five sizes smaller than she is. Can you not leak a story?”
Vardy told the court: “I did use the word leak but that’s not what I meant. I wanted to do a story about positive body image.” The court heard Vardy gave Watt access to her Instagram account before she went on I’m A Celebrity in 2017, a few months after Rooney accepted her as a follower on her private account.
Earlier in the trial, Mr Sherbourne said Vardy had “handed the gun and bullets” to Watt when she leaked stories about her to the press, but she was still “equally responsible”. Mr Sherborne said: “Like many good detective stories you never find the person responsible standing over the body with a smoking gun in their hand.
“If Mrs Rooney gave Mrs Watt the gun and the bullets, knows where it was happening and gave it her blessing, that makes her just as responsible as the person who pulled the trigger. It’s like using a hitman or woman. Just because you are not the person who gets their hands dirty, it doesn't mean you aren't responsible or equally responsible.”
Mr Sherborne said Vardy and Watt concocted a cover-up story in February 2019, when they believed Rooney was going to out them for leaking a story to The S*n about a car crash. After Rooney tweeted her concerns that someone was leaking information about her, Watt is said to have messaged Vardy telling her to say other people had access to her Instagram.
Rooney’s barrister said: “These were lies she and her agent had concocted together some time before in case they ever got caught. That story that was concocted by her and Mrs Watt in February 2019 was adapted later on when the post which she complained of is published.”
Messages allegedly show that Watt told Vardy to say she had allowed a company access to her Instagram for sponsored posts. Mr Sherborne said: “This ended up as a statement which Mrs Vardy drafted and sent to Mrs Rooney. This was a lie when it was drafted. It was a lie which was known by Mrs Vardy and Mrs Watt.”
The trial continues tomorrow.
