Rebekah Vardy has said she “deeply regrets” giving information to a newspaper about her claimed sexual encounter with Peter Andre.
The model and former reality TV contestant, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, gave evidence on Tuesday at the High Court in her libel battle against Coleen Rooney.
Mrs Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne asked Mrs Vardy about an interview she gave to the now-defunct News Of The World.
Mr Sherborne showed what appeared to be an A3 printout of the article to Mrs Vardy in the witness box before reading the headline: “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes.”
The barrister read excerpts from the article, which claimed former pop star Mr Andre had “the smallest trouser equipment I’ve ever seen”.
He asked whether she was “respectful” of Mr Andre’s “right not to share this information” about their sexual encounter with the media.
Mrs Vardy replied: “I was forced into a situation by my ex-husband to do this. It is something that I deeply regret... It is not nice to read and I understand why this is being used and to me this is mudslinging and I was also threatened with mudslinging by Mrs Rooney’s team.”
She later said she did not ask Mr Andre for his permission to reveal the information, or tell him it was going to happen in advance.
Mr Sherborne asked: “Did you feel particularly strongly about the size of his manhood that it should be made public?”
Mrs Vardy replied: “It was something that I was forced to say.”
In 2019, Mrs Rooney was dubbed “Wagatha Christie” after saying she used a process of elimination to limit the number of followers that could see some of her temporary Instagram posts to just Mrs Vardy’s account.
She then accused Mrs Vardy of leaking “false stories” about her private life to The Sun, which Ms Vardy has denied – claiming that other people, including her manager, have access to her account.
Mrs Vardy repeatedly denied leaking information to newspapers in the first few minutes of her cross-examination by Mr Sherborne on Tuesday - the first day of a seven-day trial.
She insisted that she did not tell Mrs Rooney that her agent Caroline Watt also had access to her private Instagram account but that she didn’t know her agent was viewing Mrs Rooney’s posts.
Mr Sherborne asked her: “You wouldn’t want to be called a leaker, would you?”
Ms Vardy replied: “I have been called a leaker and it’s not nice.”
During the hearing Ms Vardy, wearing a smart navy dress, sat metres away from Ms Rooney.
The pair sat in the front row of the seats in the wood-panelled courtroom with Ms Rooney, accompanied by her husband, dressed in a black suit with a navy top with a moon boot on her injured left foot.
The court case continues.
