Wagatha Christie – the world’s best pitch fight

With its quotient of Chanel bags and Zara frocks, arched versus straight eyebrows, Instagram spats, and locker room revelations, the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial in the High Court could be dismissed as a frivolous time waster.

As could its two leading ladies: whether or not Coleen Rooney (wife of Wayne) defamed Rebekah Vardy (wife of Jamie) by accusing her of leaking stories to the press is hardly a life and death matter. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine, a cost-of-living crisis at home, lying politicians, and an ailing monarch, the tribulations of two spoilt women are beyond trivial.

The nation may be gripped even as it sneers at these two slugging it out while running up legal bills in the millions. There can be no winners, surely, except the lawyers in a case that reduces both combatants to caricatures of their genre. Why did their other halves let things escalate this far?

Ah, that would be because neither footballer actually wears the trousers in these relationships but are mere “seconds” in their wives’ pistols at dawn power play.

Far from being the epitome of silliness, Coleen and Rebekah are in fact role models du jour, warrior women weaponising their social media accounts and staking their reputations to settle a score. 

Female trailblazers with nine children between them, they both left school early (Coleen with 10 GCSEs) but have forged successful, high-profile careers, as well as — and not necessarily because of — landing high-profile husbands.

Wayne Rooney may be England’s top goalscorer but at court (and one suspects in their £20 million Cheshire mansion) he is Mr Coleen Rooney, looking like his wife’s bodyguard and carrying her bags.

Jamie Vardy, the Leicester City and England striker, has not been at Rebekah’s side but one gets the impression she can handle the flak alone. She has demonstrated no need for her to call in her “support person” — her mother and dog — as did a Stonewall employee, giving evidence (online) in an employment tribunal, also in London last week.

There may have been a few theatrical tears under cross-examination but I can’t imagine either Coleen or Rebekah, a couple of old-fashioned troupers, letting down the side in the full glare of publicity.

These women are the antidote to snowflakes, both effortlessly taking hard-bitten tabloid hacks for a ride as they pursued their personal vendettas.

The sting at the heart of the case, pulled off by Coleen to trap the suspected traitor in her friendship group, was cunning by any standards. 

By planting fake stories on her Instagram account (from ingenious tales about being in talks with Strictly Come Dancing and going to Mexico for gender selection for a possible fifth child, to mundane ones about her basement flooding), Coleen — a veteran of media storms during her 14-year marriage — not only (allegedly) exposed the culprit (Vardy) but managed to trick a paper into publishing the yarns. Wagatha Christie indeed.

Vardy, for her part, was no slouch either when it came to playing the press. As she has been explaining in court this week, she did leak stories about other footballers to The Sun in exchange for money, even if she denies leaking Coleen Rooney’s Instagram posts.

She admitted that she wanted to leak a story about Leicester star Danny Drinkwater’s arrest for drink driving, saying in her WhatsApp exchanges with her agent, Caroline Watt, “I want paying for this”.

And she orchestrated paparazzi photoshoots, timing her departures and arrivals to and from hotels and restaurants at the 2018 World Cup as “unofficial leader of the Wags”, as she dubbed herself. She even staged a “pap shot” as she emerged from hospital after giving birth. What class!

Hellraising footballers used to trail silent models and former Miss Worlds in their wake but now, with Coleen and Rebekah in the vanguard, it is the women curating the column inches.

Away from the courtroom drama, both can commandeer star billing as TV “personalities”, Coleen with her own ITV show, best-selling exercise DVDs, books and advertising campaigns to her name. 

Rebekah, meanwhile, has appeared on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!, Loose Women, Dancing on Ice, and allegedly was the “Secret Wag” in The Sun who exposed the football bubble’s most lurid bombshells.

Along with other famous Wags, including Victoria Beckham and Abbey Clancy, they are mini-industries in their own right with status and mass Instagram followings to match.

Neither is likely to benefit in public esteem from the airing of their dirty laundry but what do they care? They are too big to bring down. 

After the trial, Rebekah’s ruthless streak — which saw her “throw her agent under the bus”, as Coleen’s QC put it — and her capacity for creativity will compensate for any reputational damage. She could even exploit her obvious comedic potential, displayed on the witness stand in reference to pigeons and “losing” her phone in the North Sea.

Coleen has reportedly signed a deal with Netflix to make a documentary about the Wagatha Christie trial and there will no doubt be another book, based on the notes she has been keeping throughout proceedings.

In years to come, Wayne Rooney and Jamie Vardy will appear in the annals of football history but in the records of early 21st century popular culture, they will be dull footnotes to their stellar wives’ fame.