The long-anticipated libel battle between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney kicked off today with claims, counter-claims and a sleazy account of a sexual encounter.
Leicester star Jamie Vardy’s wife told how she feared she may lose her unborn baby and was left feeling suicidal after a “chilling” phone call from her rival Wag, who accused her of leaking stories to the press about her.
But Mrs Rooney’s barrister said his client’s actions were like something out of a “good detective story”.
In an explosive witness statement on the first day of her libel action, Mrs Vardy said of the phone call: “[Rooney] didn’t answer immediately and then called me back off an unknown number.
“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 said 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 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.”
Mrs Vardy attending the hearing at the High Court in London flanked by security. Mrs Rooney arrived with her husband Wayne, 36.
In a social media post in October 2019, Mrs Rooney, 36, said she had carried out a “sting operation” to catch Mrs Vardy, 40, leaking “false stories” about her private life. She claimed an Instagram account behind three fake stories that appeared in th e Sun newspaper was Mrs Vardy’s, sparking what became known as the Wagatha Christie saga.
In her statement, Mrs Vardy told how she was on holiday in Dubai on October 9, 2019 when she saw the post accusing her of the leaks.
She said: “I was in such a heightened state of emotion because I was heavily pregnant and it felt like the whole world was caving in on me.
“I must have been in shock. I remember getting out of the car and I was shaking and thought I was going to be sick. I thought I was going to pass out.
“I knew I had not done anything wrong. I had not leaked those stories and I did not even know what posts I was supposed to have leaked.
“I started getting really bad pains in my stomach when we got back to the hotel.
“They were contraction-type pains and I panicked that the baby was in danger. I made myself calm down and tried to think clearly. The first thing I did was ring my eldest daughter’s school. She was 13 years old and children that age can be really cruel to each other. I needed to make the school aware of the situation so that they could try to protect her from bullying.
“All I cared about at that point was protecting my children. I knew there must have been a mistake. I was genuinely scared that I might lose my baby as a result of the stress I was under. I even felt suicidal. In the last two months of my pregnancy following the allegation and before my youngest daughter’s birth I was admitted to hospital on three occasions. I was diagnosed with stress induced kidney stones.”
Mrs Vardy then entered the witness box at the High Court in London, where Mrs Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne asked her about an interview she gave about a sexual encounter with singer Peter Andre.
He showed what appeared to be a A3 printout of the article to Mrs Vardy before reading the headline: “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes.”
Mr Sherborne asked: “Did you feel particularly strongly about the size of his manhood that it should be made public?” Mrs Vardy claimed she was “forced into a situation by my ex-husband” to do the interview.
Summing up Mrs Rooney’s case, the lawyer said: “Like any good detective story, you never find a person standing over the body with a smoking gun.
“You do not have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt, you just have to conclude it is more likely than not that Mrs Vardy was responsible, either directly or through Ms (Caroline – Mrs Vardy’s friend and agent) Watt.”
Mr Sherborne described what he called a series of “most improbable events” that had affected the disclosure of evidence in the case from Mrs Vardy and those around her.
This included Ms Watt’s phone falling into the North Sea “within days” of the court ordering that it should be searched for disclosure. But Mrs Vardy’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC said the suggestion that she and Ms Watt were involved in a “conspiracy” and “campaign of deletion” in relation to evidence in the case is “completely baseless”.
Mr Tomlinson said she had to bring the libel claim to “vindicate her reputation”. The hearing goes on.
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