Vardy in tears as she admits tabloid leaks came from her agent
REBEKAH VARDY was reduced to tears on the witness stand after admitting that she knew her agent had passed stories about Coleen Rooney to a tabloid newspaper.
Mrs Vardy broke down twice at the High Court hearing and proceedings had to be paused.
She is suing Mrs Rooney over claims that she was responsible for leaking stories from Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram account.
Mrs Rooney posted on social media that she had been betrayed by someone she trusted. The court heard that Mrs Vardy received a message from her agent, Caroline Watt, that read: “It wasn’t someone she trusted. It was me,” followed by a laughter emoji.
David Sherborne, for Mrs Rooney, challenged Mrs Vardy over the message and asked why she had not picked up on the admission. Mrs Vardy replied that she had been distracted by the reality contestant Gemma Collins “face-planting” in ITV’S Dancing On Ice. Mr Sherborne told her: “Caroline Watt was the source and ultimately it came from you, except you didn’t want to do the dirty work yourself.”
Miss Watt is too “fragile” to give evidence in person, the court heard. Mrs Vardy claimed her agent had been “driven to suicidal thoughts by these proceedings and the antics of the defendant”.
Mrs Rooney’s detective work involved placing two false stories on her Instagram page, which only Mrs Vardy could see. One involved a flooded basement at the family home, while in the other she claimed to be flying abroad to investigate gender selection for her fifth child.
Both stories appeared in The Sun. An earlier Instagram post, about Mrs Rooney crashing her car in Washington DC, also ended up in the newspaper.
Details from Whatsapp messages showed that Miss Watt had viewed the car crash post via Mrs Vardy’s account and passed details on to the newspaper.
Mrs Vardy conceded that she was aware of this but thought the information was already in the public domain.
Other Whatsapp messages were lost when Miss Watt’s phone fell over the side of a boat in Scotland, the court heard.
There was laughter in court when the defence brought up an interview which Mrs Vardy gave about the case in 2019, in which she was asked whether she had tried to argue her case during a phone call with Mrs Rooney. “That would be like arguing with a pigeon,” Mrs Vardy said. “You can tell it that it’s wrong, but it’s still going to s--- in your hair.”
The court heard that Mrs Vardy dismayed England players and their partners at the 2018 World Cup in Russia by colluding with the paparazzi to set up shots of the WAGS (wives and girlfriends).
The case continues.