Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice on the fourth day of the high-profile trial against Coleen Rooney. Photo / Getty Images
Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice on the fourth day of the high-profile trial against Coleen Rooney. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Vera Alves
NZ Herald Planning Editor and Herald on Sunday columnist
The world is a mess right now. Pandemic, climate change, the cost of living, the threat of nuclear war, even monkeypox now to worry about. So please let us spend some time indulging in the not-so-guilty pleasure of watching two very rich and privileged women spend their time and energy having at it in court.
The women in question are WAGs Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney and here's a brief summary of why they're so upset at each other.
It all started in 2019. These were simpler times. There was no pandemic and marginally fewer roadworks in Auckland (although I'm not super sure on that one). After a while suspecting that one of her Instagram followers was leaking information about her life to the tabloids, Coleen Rooney hatched a cunning plan. She blocked everyone on Instagram except the person she suspected was doing the leaking, then posted a series of fake stories, about things like a flooded basement or travelling to Mexico to be able to pick the gender of her baby. Anyway, when those fake stories hit the tabloids, cunning Coleen felt like she'd found the culprit so she took to Twitter to post that old pal Rebekah Vardy was the one selling stories to the press.
This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it...... pic.twitter.com/0YqJAoXuK1
Vardy denied it, of course, and proceeded to sue Rooney for defamation. Now here we find ourselves, watching a high-end personal beef unfold in front of our very eyes.
The case, which has been dubbed "Wagatha Christie" (a portmanteau of WAG - wifes and girlfriends of footballers - and Agatha Christie), is essentially Judge Judy meets the Kardashians. This story has everything - mystery, intrigue, gossip, high fashion, the size of Peter Andre's penis, an intricate web of lies and deceit, Wayne Rooney in ill-fitting suits, a phone that somehow ended up at the bottom of the North Sea, and a man named Drinkwater who was once arrested for drunk driving.
Former England footballer Wayne Rooney (right) and his wife, Coleen Rooney, leave the Royal Courts of Justice after the fourth day of the high-profile trial. Photo / Getty Images
There's even a Kiwi connection in all this. One of Coleen Rooney's sneaky Instagram stories to try to catch the leaker included a fake story about a flooded basement. Go ahead, make a leak/flooding joke guilt-free, since the whole thing was fake. Featured in her Instagram story was a bottle of Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc.
"Needed after today," Rooney wrote in her post, featuring the bottle of New Zealand wine. "Flood in the basement of our new house ... when it all appeared to be going so well."
Except there was no flood in the basement, just Coleen hopefully enjoying a bottle of one of New Zealand's finest in the comfort of her dry home while her fingers tap-tap-tapped at her phone to try to catch who was selling the information she was posting on the internet herself anyway.
Vardy vehemently denies being responsible for any leaks. The relationship between the two WAGs sounds fickle, best encapsulated by this one quote read in court, from an old interview Vardy gave to the Daily Mail: "Arguing with Coleen Rooney would be like arguing with a pigeon. You can tell it that you are right and it is wrong, but it's still going to s**t in your hair."
The libel trial lasted a week, cost millions (yes, millions) in legal fees and now it's just a matter of waiting for the judge to decide which of these two seriously rich people is going to pay for it all.
Coleen and Wayne Rooney at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, England. Photo / Getty Images
It's a load of petty nonsense and it would be hard to care less about whether or not one WAG leaked stories about another WAG, especially considering how much they have both benefited from tabloid attention over the years.
Will any good come out of this court battle? Absolutely not. But I am a big fan of soap operas (the Brazilian telenovela was a constant throughout my formative years), and this is just the right amount of low-stakes drama I've missed following.
And of course, none of us truly cares about any of this. The price of cheese is through the roof, we can't afford to care about Rooney and Vardy's beef. That's probably what makes it so appealing.
