Hell hath no fury like a Wagamamma scorned
It may not have been her intention but Coleen Rooney’s sensational social-media takedown of Rebekah Vardy, wife of footballer Jamie, has dramatically changed the public perception of her. The long-suffering wife of potato-faced footballer Wayne is no longer, depending on your perspective, just a pathetic doormat who keeps the home fires burning while her faithless husband cavorts with middle-aged hookers, or a pragmatic and family-orientated mother of four young children who never expected life to be perfect.
As one, er, wag put it, England’s foremost WAG (the nickname given to footballers’ wives and girlfriends) has been revealed as a formidable Wagatha Christie, with a flair for creating a well-paced whodunnit, a killer instinct and a willingness to wait patiently in the long grass until the time is right to plunge the knife into her prey in a spectacularly public fashion and without fear of the fallout.
Who would have thought that Coleen, the seemingly passive victim of male philandering, would emerge a primeval hunter gatherer, a vengeful Tarzan in the social-media wilderness of trolls and abuse?
As she stalked off in triumph, Rebekah’s scalp metaphorically dangling between her French manicured nails, her heavily pregnant rival desperately dialled the forensic experts from her sunbed in Dubai.
Brexit and the Budget were temporarily knocked off the front pages while normally sane people discussed this you-couldn’t-make-it-up-ifyou-tried episode of real-life Footballers Wives. It started on Instagram, or the gram as it is known, which is basically an online photograph album offering women like Coleen a platform for posting cute pictures of their children as well as their latest designer purchases.
Like most celebrities, Coleen runs two Instagram accounts; one for the great unwashed aka anyone who has the slightest interest in following her life, and the other for her trusted inner circle .
A few years ago Coleen became puzzled at how secrets divulged only on her private account were being leaked to the Sun newspaper.
Someone from her inner circle was betraying her and by a process of elimination Coleen narrowed it down to Rebekah’s account and set about catching her redhanded.
Cunningly, she closed her private account to all but Rebekah, whereupon she planted a series of fake stories about her basement flooding, seeking a gender selection specialist in Mexico and so forth.
As expected, the ‘stories’ began appearing in the tabloids, confirming the culprit’s identity for Coleen. But instead of tackling Rebekah in private, Coleen revealed the result of her sting in full technicolour detail, on Instagram , exposing Rebekah (who vehemently protests her innocence claiming that lots of people have access to her Instagram) to all manner of abuse and death threats.
Debate rages as to whether the heavily pregnant Rebekah or Coleen have right on their side. But something must have occurred to hurt Coleen more than her husband’s well-publicised adultery and provoke her to retaliate in such an uncharacteristically public fashion.
It’s thought that Rebekah’s gloating about her husband in a recent interview might have seemed like a pointed dig at Wayne and indeed Coleen’s always taking him back.
‘I wouldn’t stand for it if my husband cheated on me,’ said Rebekah, who had her first husband aged 19, and has such a dreadful reputation that her future in-laws refused to attend her and Jamie’s wedding.
‘If I was prepared to put up with that behaviour, where would my self-respect be? What example would I be giving my kids?’ she mused smugly.
Perhaps the insinuation that her children were being shortchanged by her staying with Wayne brought out Coleen’s mama bear instinct.
In Coleen’s eyes, family may be more sacred than fidelity – and motherhood, not marriage, is at the heart of her identity. It’s perhaps an old-fashioned view, particularly among WAGs, but as Rebekah Vardy discovered, hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.