It’s a shame that the ‘Wagatha Christie’ court case involving Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney isn’t being broadcast online the way Depp/Heard is, because from the sounds of it, there’s some hilarious things happening.
In case you don’t know, Vardy is suing Rooney for libel after she accused her of leaking stories to the press back in 2019. So far it doesn’t seem to be going Vardy’s way, mainly because Coleen’s team are in possession of her WhatsApp messages. Here are some highlights from those in attendance this week…
Vardy: “If I’m honest…’
Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne: “I would hope you’re honest because you’re sitting in a witness box.”(If you want to get an idea of courtroom: England’s record goalscorer continues to silently sit here, staring into space, carrying his wife’s bag.)
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 12, 2022
Rooney’s lawyer David Sherborne reads out a WhatsApp sent by Vardy, saying “Poor Coleen” followed by “laughing emojis”.
Vardy disputes this characterisation: “I don’t know whether they’re laughing emojis.”
Sherborne replies, somewhat dismissively: “OK, crying with laughter”.
😭— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 12, 2022
Rooney’s lawyers say there’s usually two copies of every WhatsApp chat on each person’s phone.
One phone is now at the bottom of the sea and Vardy lost some data during a back-up.
Vardy explains the data loss to the court: “Something odd happened as I was exporting the files.”
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 12, 2022
Vardy said she accidentally lost all of her WhatsApp images during a dodgy back-up that went wrong.
Now she’s asked how nine months of more recent WhatsApps have also been lost.
Vardy explains she may have “potentially switched phones” but “I can neither confirm or deny that”.
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 12, 2022
The court hears further details about how Vardy’s agent dropped her phone into the North Sea shortly after lawyers requested to search it.
Caroline Watt “was filming a coastline” while on a boat trip off Scotland when the boat hit a wave and she dropped the phone into the sea.
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 12, 2022
Some amazing storytelling there. The idea of Wayne Rooney and Jamie Vardy just sitting there while their wives slag each other off is just laugh out loud funny. Here’s more from another journalist in attendance…
(This involves basically stitching up a load of the England players wives, and the damning whatsapps with her agent have all been read out. Once again, we repeat, this trial was *her* idea.)
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
She is *not* the defendant but nevertheless, her defence is that she hadn’t read the WhatsApp messages that she herself wrote.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
Genius play from Vardy there. She’s confronted with WhatsApp messages she claims she never read, but technically she wasn’t lying, because she didn’t *read* them, she *wrote* them. Well played. On we go…
“You weren’t worried at all. So you say ‘fuck!’ (On WhatsApp).”
Lovely stuff.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
I have to be honest. I’m not completely clear whether Coleen legit crashed the car then used the opportunity to stitch up Vardy, or whether she, like, actually smashed it up with a mallet or something, solely for this purpose.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
We’re being told how, after this story was published, Coleen Rooney publicly stated on Twitter that she didn’t crash her car and someone’s been leaking stories about her. We move on to a fairly unfortunate whatsapp message written by Vardy’s agent.
“It was me.” It says.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
(The judge very politely sort of mumbles something about it being “figurative.”)
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
Rebekah Vardy is crying so we’re having a bit of a break. Don’t remember Gazza getting that treatment in Italia ‘90.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 12, 2022
Incredible. It doesn’t sound like Vardy and her agent did much to cover their tracks and it’s pretty bizarre they decided to take this to court when all the evidence looks to be pointing at them. And all because of this infamous Coleen Rooney tweet from 2019…
This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it…… pic.twitter.com/0YqJAoXuK1
— Coleen Rooney (@ColeenRoo) October 9, 2019
Coleen certainly ain’t happy about having to be in court all day…
“I don’t want to be in this court today, I don’t want to be here. Mrs Vardy has brought me here.”
Rooney’s also denied that she’s ever been paid to promote products on social media.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 13, 2022
Wayne Rooney’s on his way back in to the court room. He’s had to do a couple of selfies, including one with a fairly elderly chap in a Liverpool FC Champions League tracksuit who appears to be connected to some other case elsewhere in the building.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 13, 2022
And that’s the lot for today. One has to concede Coleen is a bit less box office than Rebekah, primarily on account of her not having accidentally shared thousands and thousands of devastating whatsapps with her opponents’ legal team.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 13, 2022
Yup – the reason Rooney’s lawyers have Vardy’s WhatsApp messages is because she somehow accidentally handed them over on a silver platter. What an absolute disaster for Team Vardy. Then again, it’s still early days. Plenty more drama and twists and turns to come from this trial. Any chance they can get a TV crew in there?
P.S. Does the courtroom artists have it in for Wayne Rooney or something? Absolute violation.
