For some, it was the greatest mystery of all time. For others, it was a petty squabble that should never have gone to court. Whatever your view, the Wagatha Christie case captured the public imagination, and continues to do so, four years on. The trial has been dramatised on stage and screen, as well as being the focus of a documentary. Actually, make that two. Just when you thought no more tea could be spilled, along comes Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, a first-person account from the defendant herself. People, we’re going to need a bigger mug.
While the documentary’s biggest draw is that it features her parents and husband, former England captain Wayne Rooney, speaking publicly about the case for the first time, those hoping for blinding new revelations are likely to be disappointed. His wife might aspire to be Agatha Christie, but Wayne is no Hercule Poirot, even if, according to Coleen, he became so invested in the trial that at one point, he considered retraining as a lawyer.
While he’s clearly supportive of his wife, Wayne’s voice doesn’t really add much – despite branding himself as "silly and stupid" for the tabloid headlines he made for driving another woman's car. Nor do the contributions of friends and cousins, other than to affirm how “gutted” and “betrayed” Coleen was when she discovered that someone was selling stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun.
That person, we all know, was Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, who was unmasked by Coleen after an inventive 2019 sting which saw her plant fake stories on her Instagram account, before changing her privacy settings so that only Rebekah could see them. Her diligent sleuthing worked, leading to her famous “It’s…. Rebekah Vardy’s account” social media reveal, spawning thousands of memes. Unsurprisingly, Vardy doesn't appear here, and the emotions are clearly still raw. As Coleen says, "Don't play games with a girl who can play better." Zing.
Vardy denied the allegations, and brought a defamation case against Coleen, resulting in the 2022 trial that ended up costing the Vardys £3m, including an estimated £1.5m towards Coleen’s legal costs after the judge ruled that her statements were “substantially true”.
Interesting as Coleen’s story is, more interesting still is why Vardy – a woman worth millions – felt the need to sell stories to The Sun in the first place. Who was the newspaper contact receiving the stories? The documentary notes that eight Sun journalists flatly denied that Vardy and her PR, Caroline Watt, were the culprits – though not to the extent that they were prepared to say so in court.
Coleen is a likeable character, a girl next door made good whose plight will resonate with any woman who has found herself intellectually stymied by choosing family and motherhood over a career. She clearly has the sort of analytical mind to make a good lawyer. Unlike Kim Kardashian, she lacks the ambition – which is precisely her charm. She lays out the runup to her infamous Wagatha tweet – “it’s people that I thought I trusted to be on my private Instagram account. I felt betrayed because it’s sly," she declares.
But to dismiss the case as a self-indulgent tiff ignores the serious reputational damage at the heart of it, plus the genuine toll on Coleen’s mental health, as she found herself mistrusting everyone in her inner circle. As she herself says, "It was just constantly on my mind. I was struggling. My dad said to me, 'You're just not you any more.'"
Did it need to be three episodes long? No: it’s repetitive in places, with part three exponentially the most interesting. But if its weakness is repetition, its strength is its commentary on the state of the British tabloid press, which stalked Coleen as a sixteen year-old schoolgirl and stopped at nothing to unearth salacious stories about her and her family.
That so many of these stories were sold to a paper that she, as a Liverpudlian, despises, is an extra sting. Yes, Rebekah Vardy is guilty, but The Real Wagatha Story reminds us that much darker forces than her are still at play.
