I found it very chilling and quite menacing
VARDY’S CLAIMS OVER ‘WAGATHA CHRISTIE’ CASE PHONE CALL WITH COLEEN
REBEKAH Vardy has described the ‘extremely calculated, cold and menacing’ call she had with Coleen Rooney after confronting her about her nowinfamous Wagatha Christie tweet.
In a witness statement to the libel trial at London’s High Court, the 40-yearold, who married Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy in 2016, also claimed Rooney’s sting operation was a ‘ploy’ to ‘generate sympathy for herself.’
Rooney, the wife of former United star Wayne Rooney, publicly accused her fellow WAG of sharing fake stories she uploaded to a private Instagram story in October 2019.
The posts, which went on to make stories in a national newspaper, included the 36-year-old travelling to Mexico for a ‘gender selection’ procedure and about a flood in her basement.
In her statement, Vardy said she was in Dubai at the time of the viral post and was alerted to it by her agent.
She said: “[Rooney] didn’t answer immediately and then called me back off an unknown number. I felt like she was recording the whole call.
“I hoped that, once I had told her that it was not me, then she would simply fix this. Instead, she accused me of leaking stories about her for years.
“I asked her to send me the stories that she thought I had leaked and she said that I knew exactly what I had done. I asked her how she could do that to someone who was heavily pregnant and she responded that I had been leaking stories about her when she was pregnant.
“She told me that she wanted to make me feel paranoid the way she had felt paranoid. I still remember her tone on that telephone call really vividly. It was extremely calculated and cold and she showed no remorse even though I was very upset. I found it very chilling and quite menacing.”
Vardy said Whatsapp messages with Coleen showed the ‘same cold, proud tone’ and were ‘sarcastic and totally indifferent to the enormity of what she had just done.’
Vardy said: “I genuinely think that she did not care at all about the consequences for me and my family and that she was somehow enjoying all the praise and attention that she was getting as a result of her so-called ‘sting operation.’
“I feel like it was a ploy by her to turn the press and public against me to generate sympathy for herself.”
Vardy’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told the court yesterday that an analysis of Rooney’s phone showed she had screens-hotted photos of herself mocked up as fictional detectives Agatha Christie and Miss Marple, and in a sequence from Scooby Doo.
He said: “She wasn’t, at the time of publication, congratulating herself in having exposed a matter of public interest, she was revelling in the attention and the Wagatha Christie story.”
In written submissions, Vardy admitted she ‘authorised or approved’ her agent Caroline Watt to give information to journalists ‘on occasions where she had strong views about the conduct in question.’
Vardy was asked by Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne if it was ‘wrong’ to pass on private information, to which she replied: “Yes.”
Vardy was then asked about a Whatsapp exchange with Watt where she sent an image of a woman and discussed ‘leaking’ a story about how they had been photoshopped. The photo is not possible to view as all the media files from her conversations with Watt have been deleted, the court heard.
Vardy is said to have messaged Watt: “This makes me puke, does she not realise she’s part of the problem, photoshopping pictures that make her look five sizes smaller than she is. Can you not leak a story?”
Vardy told the court: “I did use the word leak but that’s not what I meant. I wanted to do a story about positive body image.” ● Proceeding