Vardy contemplated passing story tip to Sky journalist, Wagatha case told
REBEKAH VARDY said it was a “bit of harmless gossip” when she contemplated passing a tip to a reporter about her husband’s teammate Riyad Mahrez going on strike, the High Court was told.
Messages aired at the “Wagatha Christie” trial show Vardy, the wife of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, told her agent Caroline Watt that Mahrez had not turned up for training at Leicester in February 2018 while trying to force through a move to Manchester City, adding: “Lads are fuming.”
She is then accused of agreeing to Ms Watt’s suggestion that the information could be passed to a Sky Sports News reporter, with the caveat “Just don’t want it coming back on me”.
Asked about the incident and accused of breaking the trust of Leicester and her husband, Vardy called the messages “speculation” and “gossip”.
“It doesn’t look good”, she told the High Court. “I was gossiping about things already in the public domain and the press were camped outside the training ground, taking pictures of players going in and out.
“It was an interesting story, pretty much unheard of for a player to go on strike and not turn up when he was contracted for training.”
Vardy insisted her messages to Ms Watt was “speculation and just a bit of information I’ve heard and overheard and also read in the press before”.
When pressed by Coleen Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne that she had discussed leaking news from within the Leicester dressing room, Vardy said she did not know definitely that Mahrez’s teammates were “fuming”. She added: “I didn’t know that for a fact at all.”
Vardy insisted that the information was not given to Sky News, and said: “We were just having a gossip about something that was already in the public domain. I didn’t see what harm that comment would make. It was a bit of harmless gossip.”
Rooney’s team say the tip was ultimately given to the Sun newspaper, claiming it shows Vardy’s close relationship with the organisation.
Vardy is suing Rooney for libel over the October 2019 “Wagatha Christie” social media post, which accused Vardy of leaking the contents of her private Instagram account to journalists and ended with the notorious conclusion: “It’s……….. Rebekah Vardy’s account”.
In her witness statements to the High Court trial which got under way yesterday, Vardy said Rooney “must have anticipated the reaction” to her claims, published to around three million followers, suggesting she had planned the revelation for “maximum impact”.
She claimed Rooney had told her private Instagram followers about the revelation in advance, when she “was happy to gloat to the members of the group before I had a chance to respond”, said Vardy. “It meant that everyone turned against me having heard from her first, and that manyof them made comments in public, admonishing or mocking me.
“It felt like there was a school bully pointing at me and all her friends were being directed towards me. It felt like mob mentality and that I was being attacked and humiliated from all angles.”
Rooney is fighting the libel case, insisting her original allegation about Vardy leaking stories to the Sun was true. She had laid a trap with fake social media updates, whittling down her followers to allegedly show that Vardy, with Ms Watt, was abusing access to her private Instagram feed to pass on information to journalists.
When Vardy took to the witness stand yesterday afternoon, she insisted: “I didn’t give any information to a newspaper. I’ve been called a leak and it’s not nice — I didn’t leak anything to anyone.”
Vardy accepts Ms Watt, who is too unwell to take part in the trial, may have been the source of stories but said that realisation came as a shock to her on the eve of the libel trial.
The trial continues, with Rooney and husband Wayne due to give evidence later this week.
We were just having a gossip about something... I didn’t see what harm that comment would make Rebekah Vardy