Rebekah Vardy – all brass, grit and big mouth – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But until only a few months ago, she and Coleen Rooney enjoyed a perhaps surprisingly cordial relationship.
The two women, arguably England’s leading WAGs, got to know each other during the 2016 European Football Championship, which both attended to cheer on their footballer husbands.
‘They are not best friends, but they were on good terms – until all of this happened,’ said a friend yesterday. ‘Becky still absolutely cannot believe it.’
‘All of this’, of course, is the bombshell allegations made yesterday by Coleen Rooney, who launched a social media attack on Rebekah Vardy, revealing how she set up an elaborate sting on Instagram to ‘catch’ her leaking fake stories.
The two women, arguably England’s leading WAGs, got to know each other during the 2016 European Football Championship, which both attended to cheer on their footballer husbands
It’s fair to say these two WAGs are now at war, with Becky preparing to fight for her reputation. She has made the bold move of instructing her legal team to look into suing Coleen and is after a full public apology
It’s fair to say these two WAGs are now at war, with Becky preparing to fight for her reputation. She has made the bold move of instructing her legal team to look into suing Coleen and is after a full public apology. How quickly things can turn sour. It was only back in January 2017 that Coleen, 33, sent Becky and footballer husband Jamie a gift to congratulate them on the birth of son, Finley. Motherhood certainly was common ground between them. Coleen has four sons and Becky, 37, is expecting her fifth child.
A friend said: ‘The bizarre fact about this whole Instagram thing is that if Becky had wanted to sell stories about Coleen, she has seen her and Wayne enough in person to have stories to sell, and Coleen knows that full well. But she would never breach her confidence.’
Friends of Becky confirm that she and Coleen were Instagram friends for the past few years, but deny that Becky was the mole who leaked stories from it to a tabloid newspaper, as of course does Becky herself. Her view is that Coleen – much cheated-on and a stay at home mum – is ‘clutching at straws’ by trying to draw Vardy into what her camp feel is an unhappy, rather paranoid narrative.
‘Why should she sit back and take it?,’ asked a friend of Vardy’s. ‘If she doesn’t hit back, then people will think that she was responsible.’
The WAGs first got to know one another in France in 2016, at the Euro championships. Wayne was at the tail end of his international career and Coleen was coming to the end of her reign as Queen WAG.
Jamie, meanwhile, arrived in the England camp amid huge expectations following his heroics for Leicester City, when they won the Premiership in 2016. His new wife Becky was glad to grab the limelight with a column in a newspaper, and gave numerous interviews – a media habit which she has kept going ever since.
War of the WAGs: Coleen was pictured laughing with her phone in hand before the news broke on Wednesday
Rebekah Vardy – all brass, grit and big mouth – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But until only a few months ago, she and Coleen Rooney enjoyed a perhaps surprisingly cordial relationship
Rebekah Vardy – all brass, grit and big mouth – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But until only a few months ago, she and Coleen Rooney enjoyed a perhaps surprisingly cordial relationship
But Becky has always declined to talk about the Rooneys. Which is why her comments this summer might have seemed unwise, when she boasted about her faithful Jamie. ‘My husband isn’t like the rest of them… I love and trust him,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t stand for it if my husband cheated on me, I wouldn’t put up with that in a million years. If I was prepared to put up with that behaviour, where would my self-respect be? What example would I be to my kids?’ Honestly held views, no doubt. But how will they have gone down with Coleen, famously forgiving of Wayne’s indiscretions which included a threesome with prostitutes while she was pregnant?
Yesterday, as the dust began to settle on Coleen’s extraordinary allegations against her, some in Mrs Vardy’s camp are looking back on that interview with new eyes.
So why are the WAGs, who superficially have so much in common, at war? And where will it all end? Both love manicures, fake tans, diamonds and expensive handbags. Both also live in a mega-mansions – Coleen and Wayne’s is in Cheshire and they are preparing to move to a larger, £20million property, which has been unflatteringly compared with a Morrisons supermarket, while Becky and Jamie live in a £2.5million mansion in Lincolnshire.
Both are hot-tempered – Coleen can be aggressive in an argument. But underneath, they are quite different people. Coleen has been with Wayne since she was 16 and is extremely close to her family and Wayne’s. Although at one point she had a range of jewellery in Argos and presented Coleen’s Real Women on TV in 2008, these were more a dabble in media stardom rather than a determined effort at launching her own career.
Disgusted: Rebekah (left) has denied Coleen Rooney’s accusations that she has been leaking stories on her (the pair pictured at the England vs Wales match in France in 2016)
Becky, on the other hand, is a tough, self-reliant survivor who has come through penury, depression and sexual abuse and is thoroughly enjoying her celebrity status. Born Rebekah Miranda, her father was a window cleaner and her mother a BBC local radio DJ. As a girl, she moved between Norwich, Reading and Oxford. Her parents split when she was nine. She rebelled, and recalls: ‘I got into trouble at school for fighting, drinking and behaving badly. I was unhappy and very confused.’
A sporty teen, she had a chance to try out for the GB javelin squad aged 14, but said no one had the time to take her up to London for the trials, so she gave up. She has said that from the age of 13, a family friend started to sexually abuse her. ‘I would freeze every single time, terrified. I bottled it all up,’ she said.
She took an overdose of drugs at 15 and told her mother about the abuse, but according to Becky her mother accused her of lying. Aged 16, she left the family home, and started working in a bar. Aged 19, she married electrician Mark Godden, but the union quickly failed. She then had an encounter with pop star Peter Andre after he spotted her in a restaurant and took her number – and she was less than flattering about his performance.
She married for a second time to Steve Clarke, her boss at a timeshare company. They tied the knot she was eight months’ pregnant by another man. Then came a six-year romance with former Oxford United player Luke Foster, who is the father of her son Taylor. When she met Jamie Vardy she was working as a club promoter and turned him down several times. She has worked hard on building her media profile, going on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
Shock: Moreover, Wayne and Rebekah’s footballer husband Jamie are also close friends and were pictured hugging one another at the same England vs Wales match – but it was previously claimed that Wayne had warned Jamie about his wife
Rather memorably she and Georgia Toffolo managed a barnstorming bushtucker trial munching through fish eyes, worms, sheeps’ anus, vomit fruit and a huntsman spider. She said: ‘If you cross me, you will know about it.’ As Coleen will now no doubt discover.
Coleen Rooney accuses fellow footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy of leaking stories – after setting an ingenious online trap. But her rival insists it WASN’T her… and calls in lawyers
By James Tozer and Andy Dolan for the Daily Mail
When Coleen Rooney became suspicious that someone close to her was leaking details of her life to the media, she devised a cunning trap to catch them.
In a move worthy of a classic whodunnit, she planted fake ‘stories’ on her social media accounts.
Then she blocked all her followers until only one suspect was left with access to her messages.
Yesterday, ‘Wag-atha Christie’ finally revealed the identity of the ‘culprit’… pointing the finger at fellow footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy.
But unlike a detective novel, this tale did not have a neat denouement.
Mrs Vardy – the pregnant wife of Wayne Rooney’s ex-England teammate Jamie Vardy – angrily denied it, suggesting the stories were leaked by hackers who had infiltrated her Instagram account.
Now the pair look set to end up in court after Mrs Vardy referred the allegation to her lawyers.
The unseemly row erupted yesterday morning when Mrs Rooney told her 1.3million Twitter followers there had been ‘a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it’.
She added that someone she ‘trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account’ had been ‘consistently informing The Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories’. After developing a ‘suspicion’ about who it was, she blocked every account bar one from viewing her posts. The mother-of-four, 33, then posted false stories – including one about the Rooneys’ basement in rural Cheshire being flooded by Storm Lorenzo, which popped up in the media yesterday.
Fuming: Rebekah (pictured in September) has said other people have access to her account as she appeared to be pointing the finger at her inner circle
‘Now I know for certain which account/individual it’s come from,’ she wrote. ‘I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s… Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
Mrs Vardy, 37, hit back on Twitter: ‘I’m not being funny but I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you? I liked you a lot Coleen and I’m so upset that you have chosen to do this especially when I’m heavily pregnant.’
Mrs Vardy was last night said to be cutting short her holiday in Dubai to return and clear her name.
A source close to her said ‘around ten people’ have had access to her social media account over the years, including staff at her former PR agency.
One friend said: ‘This is all confusing as I know there is a period of time that Becky was not following Coleen on Instagram but stories about Coleen were still coming out.’ Her spokesman said she was ‘very upset and stressed’ and had ‘passed it to her legal team to deal with’. ‘Such a shame that Coleen didn’t just call her when she had her number,’ the spokesman added. Legal experts said Mrs Vardy could have a claim for defamation – and Mrs Rooney could potentially make a counter-claim for invasion of privacy. The spat soon became the top trending story on Twitter in the UK. Celebrities waded in, with ex-WAG Danielle Lloyd posting rat emojis under Mrs Rooney’s post.
Even Helen Wood – a former prostitute who had sex with Wayne Rooney in 2009 – called Mrs Vardy ‘a snake in the grass’.
The Sun yesterday said each of the stories it ran on Mrs Rooney was put to her representatives before publication and each time they declined to comment.