The years-long 'Wagatha Christie' libel saga drew to a close when a specialist court ordered Rebekah Vardy to pay around £1.4 million towards Coleen Rooney's legal costs. The ruling was the final chapter of one of the most high-profile libel cases in British legal history.
The feud began in October 2019, when Coleen Rooney, wife of former England captain Wayne Rooney, published a dramatic Instagram post revealing the results of a months-long sting operation. Suspecting that stories about her private life were being leaked to The Sun, Rooney had blocked all of her Instagram followers except one account from viewing her stories, then posted a series of false stories to see if they appeared in the newspaper. They did. Her post concluded with the immortal line: 'It's... Rebekah Vardy's account.'
The internet instantly dubbed Rooney 'Wagatha Christie' in honour of her detective work, and the nickname stuck. Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denied leaking stories and in June 2020 sued Rooney for libel, insisting she needed to vindicate her reputation.
The case came to trial at the High Court in London in May 2022, and for seven days it laid bare the murky world of tabloid double-dealing and the lives of football's rich and famous. The court heard about Vardy's agent, Caroline Watt, whose phone containing potentially crucial WhatsApp messages was said to have been lost at sea. In July 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed Vardy's claim, ruling that Rooney's allegations were 'substantially true' and that Vardy had been complicit in leaking her rival's private information to The Sun through her agent.
Vardy said she was extremely sad and disappointed, insisting the judgment was not just. Rooney said she was pleased, adding that she bore Vardy no ill will but that the ruling showed she had been right. The judge ordered Vardy to pay 90 per cent of Rooney's legal costs.
What followed was years of wrangling over the size of the bill. In the final hearing, Vardy's lawyers told the court she was willing to pay £1.2 million, but Costs Judge Mark Whalan ruled she must pay an additional £212,000, bringing the total to around £1.4 million. He described the expenditure by both sides as 'extraordinary' but said he was generally happy the outcome was commercially satisfactory for both parties, adding that he hoped it was the end of a long and unhappy road.
The saga has since been dramatised for television and remains a cultural touchstone in Britain: a story of betrayal, amateur sleuthing and the extraordinary sums the wealthy will spend to defend their reputations in court.