Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy has been swept up into plenty of off pitch drama thanks to his wife Rebekah’s long standing feud with fellow WAG Coleen Rooney
Rebekah Vardy has revealed her footballer husband Jamie’s unusual response to her ongoing war with Coleen Rooney that shows no signs of ending. The WAGs and former friends have been feuding for years, which came to a head in 2022 thanks to their Wagatha Christie trial.
Coleen’s stint on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! last year reignited the public slanging match between the pair as Rebekah was said to have hatched a “revenge plot”. Rebekah, who starred on the ITV show back in 2017, famously lost the libel case and faced a massive legal bill.
She accused Coleen of hypocrisy for going on the programme after the Scouse mum’s legal team allegedly mocked Rebekah’s reality TV past. As all the attention returned on the two women, Rebekah wanted to set the record straight on her Leicester City star husband’s true feelings.
She said reports that Jamie became angry amid her conflict with Coleen and further spats since are off the mark. In a surprise confession, the media personality said: “Everyone thinks Jamie is mad at me for speaking out, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“He’s encouraging me, saying, ‘Give it to her, get the truth out there’. He loves it that she’s back getting headlines. The more stick he gets from the stands in football, the better he plays,” she told The Sun.
Their highly publicised libel case was dubbed the Wagatha Christie trial, which saw the court side with Coleen. Rebekah was ordered to pay a substantial proportion of Coleen’s legal expenses, which, together with her own legal costs, were estimated to total £3 million.
It hasn’t ended there as Rebekah has taken Coleen back to court to settle her eye-watering fees. Lawyers for Rebekah argued at a hearing in November that the sum of legal costs owed to her rival should be reduced due to what they said was “serious misconduct” by Coleen’s legal team, who allegedly “deliberately understated” her costs.
A judge previously found that no misconduct had been committed, with Rebekah now appealing against the decision. During Monday’s hearing, Jamie Carpenter KC, for Rebekah, claimed that Coleen had “very substantially understated” her legal costs.
In a written submission, he said: “At all times throughout the costs budgeting process, Mrs Rooney concealed from Mrs Vardy and the court that the incurred costs in her precedents H were much less than her true incurred costs.
“Although the costs judge was critical of Mrs Rooney’s lawyers for their lack of transparency, he held ‘on balance’ and ‘only just’ that there was no misconduct. It is respectfully submitted that he was wrong to do so.”
Mr Carpenter said a “proportionate sanction” for the alleged misconduct would be to limit the amount of Coleen’s legal costs up to August 2021 to be paid by Rebekah to £220,955.07.
Coleen’s claimed legal bill is £1,833,906.89, with Rebekah having been ordered to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.
Earlier this year, Coleen opened up about how the court case made her feel. She said: “I had no control over it and that was hard. I knew what I was saying was right, but the fact that someone else took me to court and I had to prove it and say it was what it was was tough. It was a long period of time and I couldn’t get away from it.
“I felt like I wasn’t myself, I was snappy, and every Friday the lawyers rang me – the other team try and ruin your weekend by calling at the last point on Friday. They’d tell me what’s going on and then to try and have a nice weekend.
“I’d go away and start overthinking things, and start looking for things that he’s asking for. It got to 2am, Wayne would be waiting on the couch to watch something and eventually say ‘I’m going to bed’. It put a strain on family life, friends – I wasn’t sociable.”
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