In the UK, we don’t like our celebrities to be mythical. This is a land where Alison Hammond and Adele reign supreme. We like public figures who seem, not down to earth exactly, but familiar; people you can picture eating dinner on their laps in front of Coronation Street with a glass of Blossom Hill. We enjoy the delusion that the only difference between us and someone on TV is a lottery win. This is why the battle between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy has gripped our attention for two and a half years and counting.
A tale of two Wags, Rooney v Vardy is the perfect storm of everyday pettiness and high-profile drama. On both sides are women who married into the public eye – through the former England player Wayne Rooney and Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy, respectively. Much like reality TV stars, the Wags’ relationship to the British tabloids is as symbiotic as it is stressful. Stories about anything from a new haircut to taking placenta pills fill the pages of the red tops. The content keeps their names relevant but also open to constant public scrutiny.
Throughout the 2010s, Rooney was a common presence in the Sun newspaper, where her private information as well as that of friends and family kept appearing unexpectedly. While some Wags trailed information of their lives to the press to increase their profiles, these stories were unwanted by Rooney. There was, it seems, someone in her close circle of friends leaking the stories to the press. So, in an act of digital sleuthing that has since led her to be dubbed “Wagatha Christie”, Rooney started posting fake personal news to Instagram Stories and blocked all but one person from seeing them.
The stories ranged from believable to clickbait: she was making a return to TV; she was left devastated after Storm Lorenzo flooded the basement of her £20m family home; she was travelling to Mexico to look into gender selection treatment. All of them found their way into the paper. On 9 October 2019, Rooney posted her findings on Twitter, announcing that “it’s .......... Rebekah Vardy’s account”. She dropped this bombshell while Vardy, who is now suing for defamation, was heavily pregnant and on holiday.
Almost three years later, the libel trial will begin at the high court in London today and is scheduled to last for six days. The news around it is already frenzied, with legal fees reaching millions, fears of “shredded” reputations, and vows never to speak to each other again. Beyond that, there are shock revelations and elements of intrigue that Agatha Christie herself would have been proud to write. The trial hasn’t even started and already Vardy has made allegations in court papers, pointing the finger at her press agent, Caroline Watt, while mystery circulates about a phone that “regrettably” fell into the North Sea along with the WhatsApp messages that may have contained pivotal evidence for Rooney’s case.
This trial is arguably so explosive because of the appetite the British press has for criticising women it sees as having “climbed” their way into wealth. Vardy grew up in a troubled home, and by the age of 15 she was homeless. Rooney, whose mum was a cleaner and dad a boxing coach, came from a working-class background. Both were catapulted to fame and money through their marriages, and have been treated as undeserving recipients with headlines such as “Rebekah Vardy to splash out on a new pair of boobs with I’m A Celebrity fee” and “Coleen and Wayne Rooney hit the beach in Mykonos for ANOTHER holiday just days after returning from Barbados”.
But the public don’t seem to share this disdain and there seems to be an enormous amount of goodwill towards both Rooney and Vardy for providing us with so much entertainment. When news articles contain the phrase “mansion in Lincolnshire” and a text that says “Stupid cow deserves everything she gets!”, it’s impossible not to be drawn in as if it’s an episode of Footballers’ Wives writ large. There’s something quintessentially English, almost old fashioned, about this feud. It’s like a period drama with balayage and Botox.
Ultimately, this whole affair gives us a window into the lives of the rich, and what we see is that they’re just like us. This is not a high-end courtroom drama; it’s turbocharged comment section warfare. And, against this recognisable backdrop of online drama and broken friendships, there is the knowledge that, if you had £3m to escalate a personal beef to the highest possible court, you could find yourself on the stand too.
Emma Garland is a writer who specialises in culture and music
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