Wagatha Christie is the celebrity row that refuses to simmer down – and five years on from it first kicking off, the scandal could be set to be raked over yet again.
Coleen Rooney is rumoured to be about to follow her nemesis Rebekah Vardy into the jungle for I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!, reportedly commanding the highest fee ever paid out by the ITV show. Viewers will be expecting her to spill all on what went down with Vardy, which should make for gripping campfire chats.
Elsewhere, the case recently got another airing in court for a sub-row over court costs, with it looking as though the hatchet won’t be buried any time soon.
Here’s all you need to know about what has happened in Wagatha Christie so far.
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What is Wagatha Christie?
Wagatha Christie is the nickname given to the long-running animosity between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy over accusations about selling stories to the tabloids.
From 2017 to 2019, a series of source-says gossipy stories about Rooney appeared in The Sun – including one that claimed she and her footballer husband Wayne Rooney were on the way to Mexico for gender selection treatment to guarantee a baby girl, another about her apparent plans to revive her TV career, and a third about her flooded basement.
In a now-infamous October 2019 social media post, Rooney explained that they were all false stories she had planted herself on Instagram as she was suspicious someone had been selling information about her. She cut the list of followers able to see each post to just one suspect – and in the ultimate gotcha moment, ended her post: “I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s……….Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
Vardy immediately hit back, responding: “I’m not being funny but I don’t need the money.” She has stuck to her story ever since.
Thanks to Rooney’s savvy detective work and the fact that her rival is also married to a footballer, Jamie Vardy, the spat earned the moniker Wagatha Christie, spawning memes based on Rooney’s final line all over the world.
However, things were about to get a lot more complicated as Vardy, pregnant with her fifth child at the time and claiming that the stress of the accusations had led to her being hospitalised, sued Rooney for libel in 2020.
Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy’s first court battle
It was the most highly-anticipated celebrity legal battle of recent times and after preliminary hearings, Rooney and Vardy finally came face to face at the High Court in May 2022.
Twists and turns leading up to their court appearance included Vardy’s agent Caroline Watts becoming entangled in the argument as a series of texts between Watts and Vardy came to light.
Watts withdrew her waiver which would have allowed Sun journalists to reveal their source for the story, but Vardy’s barrister told the court that his client “appears to accept” that her agent was responsible for the leaked stories.
In a further development stranger than fiction, Vardy and Watts claimed the messages between them couldn’t be given as evidence because Vardy had wiped them while trying to recover them from her laptop, while Watts said she had lost her phone in the North Sea when a boat she was on hit a wave and it fell overboard.
Those following the case were gripped by details including Wayne Rooney appearing at one point to say he had known nothing about his wife’s detective work until her post; Rooney admitting that she and Wayne had been living separately after he was caught drunk-driving in 2017 with another woman in the car; and Vardy having to apologise for a News Of The World kiss-and-tell from her younger days where she had compared Peter Andre’s penis to “a mini chipolata.
Ultimately, though, the judge ruled that Rooney’s social media post was “substantially true” and Vardy lost her libel case.
Wagatha Christie back in court
Despite the July 2022 ruling, Wagatha Christie’s legal wranglings were not over yet as the case was back in court in October 2024 over a disagreement about the costs Vardy had been ordered to pay.
She had been told she would need to cover 90% of Rooney’s legal costs, with the bill coming in at an eye-watering £1,833,906.89 which Vardy’s legal team claimed was more than three times the agreed amount and headed back into court accusing Rooney’s legal team of misconduct.
However, the judge again ruled in Rooney’s favour and Vardy’s team have now launched an appeal bid, so the case is still not over yet.
All the TV shows about Wagatha Christie
Unsurprisingly, the warring wags epic captured the public’s attention so much that TV programmes have been queuing up to cash in on the story from both sides.
Rooney was upfront about her claim to be telling the truth in her Disney+ documentary title, Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, where she opened up on her version of events.
However, Vardy had tried to win the public over after losing her libel case in a tell-all TalkTV interview where she broke down in tears talking about the stress she had been under.
A more impartial documentary was Discovery+’s two-parter Vardy vs Rooney: The Wagatha Trial – although only Vardy agreed to be interviewed alongside a walk-through of the case so far.
Meanwhile, over on Channel 4 Wagatha addicts could see dramatisation Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama which even managed to sign up Michael Sheen as one of the barristers.
Finally, Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial took the tale to London’s West End, with the theatre show using verbatim court transcripts as its script.
I’m A Celebrity appearances
Rumours over the 2024 line-up for I’m A Celebrity claim that Rooney is set to make a jungle appearance – and she’s said to be commanding the highest fee the show has ever paid out.
The Sun has reported that she is going to be paid more than £1.5m for taking part, which suggests she’ll be expected to provide value for money with further comments on her part in Wagatha Christie.
However, Vardy has already taken part in the show, although it was in 2017 before the row had kicked off. After she left, her campmate Iain Lee accused her of making him miserable and isolating him, but while she denied bullying and said it was the way it had been edited, he shot back: “They can only edit what you do and say. You don’t get to say if I was bullied. You made my time in the jungle miserable.”
Post-Wagatha Christie, Vardy has also taken part in Dancing On Ice. I’m A Celebrity would be Rooney’s first reality TV appearance.
