Why the Wagatha Christie trial was always a bad idea for Rebekah Vardy

The model has lost the libel case she brought against Coleen Rooney at huge personal and financial cost

After all is said and done, would it have mattered if it was Rebekah Vardy’s account or not?

Ms Vardy has lost the “Wagatha Christie” libel battle against Coleen Rooney over an infamous social media post, after a High Court judge found on Friday it was “substantially true”.

She now faces a potentially huge legal bill for her unsuccessful claim, and a reputation that has been put through the wringer.

The model had sued Ms Rooney, the wife of former England captain Wayne Rooney, for libel after she claimed Ms Vardy’s Instagram account leaked private information to The Sun.

The result: a high profile and expensive trial which looked at whether this was precisely the type of thing Ms Vardy would do.

Regardless of whether she won or lost, the details that emerged during the trial were often ugly.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking she was the defendant in the case, and not Ms Rooney.

Rebekah and Jamie Vardy leaving the Royal Courts of Justice during the trial (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Wire)

On the very first day of the trial in May, Ms Vardy was asked whether she respected other people’s privacy and shortly afterwards about a 2004 interview on an alleged sexual encounter with Peter Andre.

Ms Rooney’s lawyer read the headline out to the High Court: “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes.”

After this, the Mysterious Girl singer spoke about how it affected him. “I’ve taken it for 15 years,” he said.

Messages read to court also revealed how she and her agent, Caroline Watt, would discuss leaking - or potentially leaking - information to the press.

Coleen and Wayne Rooney attended the trial earlier this year (PA Wire)

This included gossip about her Leicester City striker husband’s teammates. When her agent asked if she wanted to leak it, Ms Vardy opted against this to avoid a trail linking back to her.

Other messages showed Ms Vardy saying she wanted paying for information about a footballer’s arrest. “F*** someone already tipped it,” she later said.

Another exchange showed her agent admit to leaking information from Ms Rooney’s private Instagram.

Ms Vardy insisted it was not “standard practice” to leak information to The Sun through her agent and the comment about wanting financial reward for information was not a “serious comment”.

Other instances painted Ms Vardy as - in Ms Rooney’s words - “fame hungry”.

She was accused of purposefully sitting behind Ms Rooney at a Euro 2016 football match to soak up press attention on the latter - whose husband was England captain at the time.

The court heard how Ms Vardy’s seats were somewhere else and her guests became “abusive” when asked to move.

Mr Rooney also told the court he asked Jamie Vardy to “calm down” his wife during the same tournament over media attention.

Ms Vardy now faces a substantial legal bill (PA Wire)

The ins and outs of celebrities trying to get themselves - and others - in the news is never going to be pretty.

But while Ms Vardy had her personality and motivations scrutinised, Ms Rooney - or “Wagatha Christie” - was mainly quizzed on how and why she decided Ms Vardy was the culprit.

As Tom Peck, our political sketch writer wrote at the time: “One almost has to pinch oneself each time one remembers that it is Vardy, not Rooney, that has brought us to this point.”