'Wagatha Christie': Vardy's agent admitted leaking story in WhatsApp messages, court hears

8 February 2022, 14:31 | Updated: 8 February 2022, 16:35

Rebekah Vardy's agent admitted leaking a story to The Sun about Coleen Rooney in a series of explosive Whatsapp messages revealed in court.

The wife of former England star Wayne Rooney, dubbed "Wagatha Christie", claimed Mrs Vardy had shared fake stories she had posted on her personal Instagram account with The Sun newspaper.

Mrs Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, is suing Mrs Rooney for libel after the 35-year-old accused her of leaking "false stories" about her private life in October 2019 after carrying out a months-long "sting operation".

At the start of his submissions at the High Court on Tuesday, David Sherborne, acting for Mrs Rooney, gave previously heard details of how his client placed false stories on her private Instagram account after restricting her stories to only Rebekah Vardy's account.

He said: "We say the sting operation worked, those stories appeared in The Sun despite having one follower."

Mr Sherborne said Mrs Rooney had not discussed the "sting" with anyone else, "not even her husband".

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Mr Sherborne said Mrs Vardy and her agent Caroline Watt were "routinely" looking at Mrs Rooney's private Instagram stories with a view to having them published.

He told the court that, days after a story about her car was published in The Sun, Mrs Rooney posted a tweet saying it was "sad" someone who followed her was "betraying" her.

While discussing the tweet in a private WhatsApp conversation, Ms Watt told Mrs Vardy "It wasn't someone she trusted. It was me", in a message accompanied by a laughing face emoji.

Mr Sherborne said: "What we say is that the inference to be drawn from that is that Mrs Vardy knew perfectly well what she was doing, and was behind it and was encouraging it."

In other WhatsApp messages shown in written submissions, Mrs Vardy refers to Mrs Rooney as a "nasty bitch" and "such a dick".

The barrister told the High Court that Mrs Rooney was making a claim for further information to be disclosed.

He added Ms Watt's phone had fallen into the sea after a boat she was on hit a wave.

"(It was) most unfortunate, because it was only a short time after the court ordered that the phone should be specifically searched," he said.

The court heard that on the day of Mrs Rooney's Twitter post which ended "It's.......... Rebekah Vardy's account", Mrs Vardy sent a message to Ms Watt, stating: "That's war."

Mrs Rooney's lawyers previously claimed that Mrs Vardy had leaked information to The Sun either directly or through Ms Watt "acting on her instruction or with her knowing approval".

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In written arguments, Mrs Rooney's barrister David Sherborne said: "From the outset, Mrs Vardy has always claimed that neither she nor Ms Watt were involved in the leaking of private information from Mrs Rooney's Instagram account.

"The recent disclosure has shown that this is emphatically not the case."

The barrister later claimed Mrs Vardy had "animosity" towards Mrs Rooney which showed "clear motivation for Mrs Vardy to leak private information about Mrs Rooney to the newspaper, with repeated bad-mouthing of her in a way which is clearly consistent with and linked to the desire to leak private information about her".

Hugh Tomlinson QC, for Mrs Vardy, said the denied allegations have caused her "huge damage and distress".

The barrister said the information and messages disclosed "provides no evidence that the claimant leaked the three fake posts".

He added that Mrs Rooney "relies upon selective and incomplete WhatsApp exchanges...conveniently ignoring the messages which demonstrate beyond doubt that the claimant was not responsible for leaking the defendant's private information to The Sun."

At the hearing on Tuesday, Mr Sherborne said Mrs Rooney had brought a claim against Ms Watt for misuse of private information, which Ms Watt denies.

Ian Helme, for Ms Watt, said she had given "clear and consistent" denials against the claim for misuse of private information.

In written arguments, the barrister said that it was not only Mrs Vardy's Instagram account that had viewed the post about Mrs Rooney's car, adding that the incident also took place in public.

"It is difficult to see how there could be said to be any reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to such information," Mr Helme said.

He later said that Mrs Rooney's lawyers had taken "an extremely aggressive, confrontational, no-stone-unturned approach", calling the claim against her an abuse of process.

The hearing before Mrs Justice Steyn is due to finish on Wednesday.

The trial is due to begin in early May of this year.