Rebekah Vardy was begged by her PR agent not to pursue a legal battle with Coleen Rooney, after the now famous Wagatha Christie Instagram post, a pal of the agent has claimed.
Coleen's post in 2019, accusing Rebekah, 40, of leaking stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun newspaper, has now seen the two wags face each other in the High Court, and Rebekah's former agent Caroline Watt repeatedly mentioned.
The wife of Jamie Vardy denies the claim and is suing Coleen, 36, for defamation. She took to the stand for much of last week during the trial, crying on several occasions as she was questioned by Coleen's barrister, including when she was accused of throwing Caroline "under the bus".
Now friends of the PR agent claim that Caroline tried to persuade the I'm A Celeb winner not to sue Coleen and move on with her life.
Pals of Caroline claim she was initially supportive of Rebekah, but became alarmed when the argument went down a legal route, The Mail On Sunday reports.
One friend said: "She was determined that she was going to get her apology from Coleen at any cost, so she just kept going and going.
"Becky was warned it was going to get expensive and there was a lot of damaging correspondence between Caroline and herself, but it was like Becky was on a runaway train and there was nothing Caroline could do about it.
"It all got out of control. It was quite extraordinary for Caroline to see. She spent years advising Becky and being her friend, so she hoped that, on this one, she would listen to her. Alas, she didn't," the mate finished.
In a sensational twist last month, Rebekah appeared to accept in her witness statement that Caroline could have been behind the leak of stories from Coleen's Instagram account.
In a pre-trial hearing this was described as a "radical change" by Coleen's barrister David Sherbourne, as Rebekah had previously said "Caroline Watt is not the source."
On Thursday, Mr Sherbourne told the court that days after a judge had ordered Caroline's phone to be searched for messages relating to the trial, it had been dropped in the North Sea while she was on a boat trip.
He said there had been a "catalogue of unfortunate events" which led to potential evidence vanishing and accused Rebekah of deliberately concealing evidence.
Rebekah denied deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages between herself and Caroline before October 15, 2019.
Watt has been deemed to ill to testify in the trial.
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In another exchange on Thursday, Mr Sherbourne accused Rebekah of not wanting to "do the dirty work herself" and roped in Caroline who is refusing to give evidence on her behalf.
He went on: "It not her that betrayed you as you suggest it is you that have betrayed her by throwing her under the bus.''
Vardy replied: "That's a joke."
The Mirror has approached Rebekah for comment.
