The second day of the Rebekah Vardy and Colleen Rooney libel case, dubbed the Wagatha Christie trial, began in court earlier, with some absurd sporting related revelations.
The case is due to Rebekah Vardy, wife of Jamie, suing Wayne’s Rooney’s wife Colleen for defamation, after she had publicly accused Rebekah Vardy of leaking private stories to the Sun newspaper.
While this trial may be petty and trifling to a large extent, it does give an absorbing insight into the inner-workings of the British football tabloid media and how stories come to be leaked.
The day's court proceedings were detailed by Jim Waterson in The Guardian, where it was revealed that Vardy had told her agent Caroline Wyatt to leak a story to the Sun about Danny Drinkwater drink-driving, while she also told Watt on WhatsApp that “I want paying for this x.”
However, it turned out that the Sun had already been given the story, to which Vardy commented “fuming I didn’t give it to you earlier” to her agent Watt. Vardy also stated that this was just a once-off occurrence.
Day 2. Vardy is being cross-examined about texts to her agent about Riyad Mahrez.
Vardy: “Mahrez not turned up to training again, the lads are fuming.”
Agent: “Really? Why don’t you tell [Sky reporter] Rob Dorsett”
Vardy: “I just don’t want it coming it coming back on me.”— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 11, 2022
Another footballer brought up by the case was Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez, who previously played with Jamie Vardy at Leicester City.
Rebekah Vardy had heard that ‘the lads’ were fuming over Mahrez missing training, and told Watt to leak the information to a Sky Sports journalist. However, even though a similar story was published on Mahrez, Vardy claims that it was not from her and that she was just gossiping about information already known to the public.
Further texts were then revealed where Vardy also passed on info about former Leicester player Danny Drinkwater.
Court hears Vardy discussed passing info on footballer Danny Drinkwater to the Sun.
She told her agent: "I want paying for this x"
Vardy says of that text: “It was a fleeting thought… I didn’t think any more about it than when I just wrote it... It wasn't a serious comment.”— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 11, 2022
In a further revelation from Vardy and Watts’ WhatsApp exchanges, Vardy is seen discussing leaking a story about a well-known celebrity, who is not named, having an affair with a well-known but also unnamed footballer.
Again, the former model has denied that she ever would have leaked such information and said that she was only joking about leaking the information.
In what is turning out to be a rather surreal case, the irony of it is that Vardy’s character is being damaged by it, but it was she who took the case to court in the first place in response to Colleen Rooney allegedly defaming her character.
While the trial may seem trivial an unimportant it does have a strange addictiveness to it, and if there are further footballing related revelations it will be difficult not to keep a close eye on it.
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