[birds chirping]
There was a lot of preparation in advance
to travelling to London for the court case.
I had to pack for the week.
And then told my mum what the kids were doin' each day,
what they needed to take to school.
There's all the uniforms.
These here are Cass's.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Monday.
I literally wrote a whole rota.
Kit and Cass swim Wednesday. Kai swims Thursday.
Cass's PE kit. Friday. Kai for his school trip on Friday.
Um, I think that's everything.
Yeah.
I make sure everything's prepared before I go,
so I can then rest my mind when I'm away from them.
[Wayne] Go on.
-I'll meet ya in Easterton. -[giggles]
[Coleen] It was nice to have Wayne beside me.
But I didn't think it would be any other way.
Wayne drove to London.
It was not an enjoyable one for Wayne, because I was not good company.
I don't think we spoke a word. [chuckles]
We'd had-- She had the files out, and she was lookin' at stuff.
Three-and-a-half-hour, four-hour car journey.
I drove to keep myself occupied. [chuckles]
[Coleen] I just had so many things going through my head.
The thought of being in court, it scared me.
I felt like the victim, and I was havin' to defend myself
for something that… [sighs] …I didn't think was wrong at all.
It was a new journey,
a journey that I never, ever wanted to be on.
[reporter 1] Two-and-a-half years after the original tweet which started it all,
Wagatha Christie starts today at the high court.
[reporter 2] …made headlines all around the world.
[reporter 3] …plot twist Wagatha Christie herself couldn't have foreseen,
was that three years on from that infamous Instagram post,
naming Rebekah Vardy as guilty,
she'd be dragged to court over it.
[reporter 4] It's two very rich women spending millions of pounds
on this court case.
[Coleen] A court case, to me, is for the public.
It's a circus for everyone. [stammers] It's a show for everyone else.
[reporter 5] Photographers and cameras have already arrived.
[reporter 6] A number of celebrity names are going to be brought up.
[Coleen] I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I was in this situation.
[shutters clicking]
[Morgan] If you're a newspaper editor, this is a dream story.
It's two seething WAGs married to two famous footballers
locking horns and going to court,
where all the dirty linen on all sides is going to be washed.
They're like, "This is gonna be total mayhem,
and we'll probably sell a lot of newspapers."
A panic came over me, and it was-- it was happening.
It was-- You know, it was real.
[reporter 7] The high court case between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney
has got everybody talking.
[shutters clicking]
[commentator] Enter Coleen Rooney.
You may know her as the wife of former England football captain Wayne Rooney.
[shutter clicks]
Rebekah Vardy,
she's the wife of another England football player Jamie Vardy.
Vardy says she wasn't behind it.
[Freeman] I've covered the Oscars.
I've covered the Golden Globes.
Nothing has compared to the excitement of going to Wagatha.
It was, like, the hottest ticket in town.
[reporter 8] Both women were present in court,
sitting on the same wooden bench about two metres from one another.
Yeah, I looked at her.
I never said hello.
It was awkward.
I think I made a point of looking to say,
"I didn't want it…
but this is it now."
[reporter] Now, under English libel law, the onus is on Coleen Rooney
to prove that that Wagatha Christie post was substantially true.
That it was "dot, dot, dot, Rebekah Vardy's account".
[Coleen] When the legal case with Rebekah started,
I'd never been in a courtroom before.
I didn't know what to do.
It was all new to me.
[Lunt] There are some cases where
you first become aware of them before you're involved professionally.
And I remember seeing the post,
and my jaw hit the floor, to be honest with you.
[Coleen] When the lawyers were putting the case together,
I felt like we had a good start
because I had evidence there to give them.
[Hurworth] Because you put out the morning posts,
they had to get, like, a bit more, like…
[Lunt] Coleen had with her a large wad of papers,
which were all in cellophane wrappers, neatly organised, labelled, Post-it notes.
[Coleen] It's noted, so it's all sorted. It's all, like, just jotted…
I laid it all out in the office and told them the whole story
from beginning to end.
And then I rang the journalist that you'll see in here.
[Hurworth] You know, if she had come to a lawyer and said… [chuckles]
…"I think someone's leaking on me. Like, what can I do about it?"
Never in a million years would I have said,
"Oh, you just go on your Instagram settings,
you change the functionality, upload fake stories,
and then once you've whittled it down, you go online and make the accusation."
-You know the photo you put out? -Yeah, yeah.
That was, like, the 22nd.
The investigation that Coleen had done was excellent,
but the evidence that we had wasn't good enough.
[typing]
[Hurworth] There's two links in the allegation that Coleen had made.
[notification whistles]
Did Rebekah Vardy or someone with access to her account
view the content in question?
The second link of the chain is did they pass it to The Sun?
And that is the evidence Coleen didn't give us on that day.
[Coleen] I was gutted.
In my eyes, what I had was, you know, it was enough.
But, obviously, in a legal battle, she would win.
[birds chirping]
-[Coleen] Kai. -[Kai] What?
[Coleen] Here's your trainers.
-[children chattering] -[Coleen] You don't need a coat.
I didn't talk to anyone about the case
because I didn't want to see them worrying.
-Wayne. -[Wayne] Yeah?
-I'm going down. -[Wayne] All right.
[Coleen] I tried my hardest to think,
"Was there a way of getting out of this?"
[coach chattering]
[sighs]
We did have conversations very early on about a settlement.
Of course, Coleen's the defendant, not the plaintiff,
and she would have to accept Rebekah's terms.
It was a very high bar that had to be met.
[Hurworth] It wasn't in question that Rebekah Vardy
had suffered damage to her reputation as a result of what Coleen had posted.
The abuse that her kids had received, or the trolling that she'd received.
It was all terrible.
So, she was seeking substantial damages
and an order that Coleen is required to make a public statement,
which would essentially be an apology.
She wanted me to accept that I got it all wrong.
[Wayne] To be honest, I wouldn't want her to do that.
To come out and say she's made a mistake when, um, she didn't feel she has.
[coach] Nearly, K.
[Wayne] She shouldn't have to do that just to live an easy life.
I said to Coleen, "Whatever you do to seek to avoid a trial,
you're going to have to live with it for the rest of your life."
[Coleen] I say to my kids, "Always tell the truth."
Go and score. Go and score in that goal.
[Coleen] For me, as a person and for my beliefs,
I wasn't gonna say something that was wrong.
I had to battle on.
It was like watching two people play chicken on a train track.
Neither of them was going to jump first.
They were willing to take it to the high court.
[Lunt] I knew that my team would be well capable
of loading the bullets for the trial.
But you need to choose the right person to fire them.
[shutters clicking]
-[paparazzo] Morning. -Morning.
David Sherborne, he's this very superpower, A-list lawyer,
you know, the flowing hair, the tan.
That tells us something, doesn't it?
He's a friend to the A-listers.
[reporter 1] Clients include Meghan Markle.
[shutters clicking]
[reporter 2] Actress Sienna Miller.
[paparazzo] Morning, Sienna.
[Boshoff] He's on the steps of the court with Hugh Grant…
-[spectator 1] Johnny! -[Boshoff] …or Johnny Depp.
[spectators cheering]
[Lunt] Whether we wanted it or not, the trial was going to be theatre…
-[spectator 2] We love you! -[cheering]
…and one of David's great skills is he performs well
in the theatre of the trial.
[shutters clicking]
[Sherborne] I knew that, like any good mystery story,
nothing was going to be a slam dunk.
The whole case was called Wagatha Christie,
and it was a sort of whodunnit.
[Morgan] I know there's something we can't talk about,
but everyone else is talking about.
So the thing that we can't talk about,
is there anything you can say about it?
[Sherborne] Rebekah Vardy very publicly stated
that she had no knowledge to all of any of this.
[Rebekah] I want to clear my name, and, you know,
I will do whatever that takes.
[Sherborne] There was the explanations given by Rebekah Vardy
that, "There are lots of people who use my account."
[Hurworth] It was confirmed that the primary people that had access
to Rebekah Vardy's account were Rebekah Vardy
and Caroline Watt, her agent.
[Coleen] I had never heard of Caroline Watt before.
If I walked past her in the street, I would not know who she was.
[Lunt] Mrs Vardy's interaction with the media
was often, if not exclusively, through her agent, Caroline Watt.
[Coleen] Early on, before disclosure,
Rebekah and I had to preserve all messages and emails.
[Hurworth] The court require you to disclose documentation to your opponent
whether it's helpful or harmful to your case.
In this case, the smoking gun would've been
screenshots from Rebekah Vardy to a journalist at The Sun
sending Coleen's posts on.
[phone rings]
[Coleen] My legal team rang me and said,
"We've got some of the messages between Rebekah and Caroline Watt.
They'll send them over to ya."
And I remember looking at the messages and feeling sick.
"Caroline: Babe, has Coleen unfollowed you?
Bex: OMG. I just saw. Wow.
What a cunt."
I just couldn't believe that two women
could be so nasty about someone that they don't know.
"Bex: I'm going to message her.
Caroline: I would leave it a while
and then, in a few weeks, message her and ask if you have offended her."
Then I thought about my WhatsApp exchange with Rebekah.
[message dings]
I just thought, "You're so two-faced."
"Bex: I never usually message her and say, 'Hi.'
Maybe I should say something about Rosie."
To plan to create a story
to get me to reply back is one thing,
but to use my sister, who's passed away…
was just wrong.
[typing]
It was a big thing to get their messages,
but my lawyers told me that they haven't handed over everything.
There was things missing.
[Hurworth] When we'd opened the document,
all the media files, images, voice notes just said, "Image omitted."
[Lunt] But also, some of the messages had been redacted,
so we couldn't read parts of the documents.
And the reason that was given was that it's just irrelevant.
[reporter 1] Coleen Rooney's lawyer said he wants all the WhatsApp messages
to be released in full.
[Lunt] But after we asked for the relevant documents and records…
we find out that the laptop
Mrs Vardy used to transfer the WhatsApp exchanges to her solicitors
had crashed, but it'd also been disposed of.
[Hurworth] Rebekah Vardy's phone, when the IT forensics examined it,
had experienced this IT malfunction.
The messages then got deleted.
[reporter 2] Coleen Rooney's team have expressed their frustration.
We applied to have Caroline Watt's devices searched too.
Caroline Watt's phone isn't available.
[reporter 3] That telephone belonging to Caroline Watt,
was, you might say fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not kidding, dropped…
…off the side of a boat in the North Sea.
[Coleen] I didn't know what was on that phone or that laptop,
but there could've been vital information that would have helped my side.
I felt like it was a step backwards,
but there was nothing we could do about it.
[horn honks]
One of the critical moments in the lead-up to the trial
was the exchange of witness statements.
[Lunt] There is a degree of anticipation when you finally get to see,
all right, which witnesses they're actually gonna call,
and what are they gonna say.
[Hurworth] We received all of the witness summaries
at the same time in one folder.
It says, "Rebekah Vardy, Caroline Watt."
And then it's witness summaries from all these different journalists at The Sun
who had written the leaked articles.
Every single one of them said,
"I can confirm that it was neither Caroline Watt
nor Rebekah Vardy that was the source."
I just thought, "Shit."
Bumped into Paul an hour or so later.
[Lunt] I saw Jamie in the corridor,
and after the pleasantries of "All right, mate", um, he said…
"You seen the witness statements?"
And he was like, "Yeah, yeah. I, like, opened them very quickly."
He says, "We're fucked, aren't we?" [chuckles]
[phone buzzes]
I phoned Paul Lunt straight away and said, "What-- What's going on here?"
I did what I could to reassure Coleen, but they didn't look promising.
I was concerned because that means I've got no case.
All this fight for nothing.
[Sherborne] That was devastating evidence.
We had to find a way out for her because she was going to lose at trial.
[shutter clicks]
[Coleen] It made me ill. It completely changed me as a character.
I remember sitting with my dad one day, and we took Klay to football…
and he just looked at me and said, "Coleen, you're just-- you're so--
You're just not you anymore. You just-- You look sick."
[Danielle] I remember turning up in a Costa Coffee car park
and her car looking like an office.
She had her laptop open, she had her phone.
There was ring binders everywhere, there was paperworks everywhere,
and she just looked like a deer in the headlights.
I was like, "Are you okay?"
[Coleen] It was horrible 'cause I didn't wanna be around people,
and that's not me at all.
And I was snappy at the kids.
-[children chattering] -[Coleen] Watch the mud. Watch the mud.
Get them away.
I just hated trying to be happy, and I'm a happy person,
and I… [sniffles, stammers] …I could see people were concerned.
♪ Happy birthday, dear Coleen ♪
But it was just constantly on my mind. I couldn't get away from it.
[Wayne] I remember a few times saying to her, "Just forget about it. Sit down.
Let's watch TV and relax a little bit." But she could never get it off her mind.
[shutter clicks]
Probably the lowest I've seen her.
[Stretford] I remember her crying really badly on the phone,
and it was becoming unbearable.
And I thought Coleen would just fold and give Rebekah what she wanted.
[Sherborne] That was a difficult period, but I remember thinking to myself,
"These witness summaries weren't quite what they appeared to be."
[Lunt] There were reasons to think, "This doesn't add up."
The majority of 'em aren't even signed by the journalists in question.
In advance of trial, there was a hearing.
For the first time, The Sun was represented through their barrister.
[Hurworth] It's normally just a really quite boring technical hearing,
but all hell was breaking loose.
[Lunt] The Sun journalists were saying, "We don't want to turn up at trial.
We will resist being compelled to turn up at trial."
The obvious question will be, who gave you that story?
And the only answer that I can give and ever would give
is the same one that we, uh-- that we gave in the high court.
We would never reveal it. That's simply not something we would do.
The first rule of journalism for any newspaper,
you don't reveal your sources.
Once you do, you never get another story.
Who would trust you?
[Hurworth] We'd got the impression that those witness summaries
that we'd been provided with weren't necessarily accurate,
and that it was an attempt by Rebekah Vardy's team
to force Coleen into settlement.
I didn't understand the tactics of how sides work against each other.
But when The Sun journalists said they won't get on that stand,
there was a sense of relief.
But we still had other hurdles to get over.
I had to continue with that legal battle.
[Lunt] Around the same time, it rapidly became apparent
that Caroline Watt did not want to give evidence at trial.
[reporter] Let's get the very latest instalment
in the so-called Wagatha Christie saga.
Unfortunately, Caroline Watt is now not well enough
to appear in court as a witness.
Caroline Watt will not be appearing during the trial because she has a medical note.
[Sherborne] This coincided with the fact that, to us,
it was becoming undeniably obvious that Caroline Watt was involved.
[Boshoff] Shortly before she withdrew,
I'd spoken to Caroline about giving evidence,
and she'd seemed--
Uh, she a bit more chatty than usual.
She had a lot she wanted to say.
None of it was for publication or repeating.
She did seem anxious.
Rebekah then changed her witness statement.
Rebekah Vardy is said to now accept
that her agent may be to blame for leaking stories to the press.
[Lunt] Although Mrs Vardy said,
"I accept that my agent, Caroline Watt, may have been behind the leaks,"
we still needed to prove that Mrs Vardy
not only knew about it but actually authorised it.
It was absolutely all to play for.
[reporter] Well, you can see the press is gathering for the start
of this Wagatha Christie trial.
The journalists all got to sit in the jury box 'cause there wasn't a jury.
So we're right in the courtroom.
Nothing has compared to the excitement of going to Wagatha.
[notification whistles]
I include my daughter's birth in that.
I'd speak to other journalists and say, "Ooh, who do you think is going to win?"
And a lot of people were backing Rebekah.
[reporter] Well, shortly, we are going to hear opening submissions
from David Sherborne who is Coleen Rooney's lawyer.
[shutter clicks]
[Sherborne] In the absence of that silver bullet,
there needed to be a strategy to try and demonstrate…
-[shutters clicking] -[chattering]
…Rebekah Vardy was, more likely than not, responsible.
[reporter] In court, David Sherborne said…
[Sherborne] "This is a detective story.
And like any good detective story,
you never find the person responsible with a smoking gun in her hand.
Our case is that, responsible, in real terms,
doesn't mean that it's Mrs Vardy who had to pull the trigger herself.
If she gave Mrs Watt the gun and the bullets,
told her who to target and gave her blessing,
that makes her just as responsible as the person who pulled the trigger."
[clock chiming]
[reporter] Determined to clear her name, Rebekah Vardy finally took to the stand.
[Freeman] It was absolutely silent in the courtroom.
You could just feel the whole press box
just, kind of, sitting forward in their seats.
[Boshoff] Now we come to the whole nub of it.
Two women questioned on the stand and bound to give a truthful answer.
[reporter 1] When she went into the witness box,
Coleen Rooney stared at her the whole time.
[Coleen] When Rebekah was on the stand,
I took notes of things that I wanted to ask the legal team.
I was eager to know what was gonna come out of her mouth.
[reporter 2] Rebekah Vardy was cross-examined by David Sherborne.
She was asked if she respected people's privacy.
She said she did.
[Sherborne] The fact that she agreed with me,
it was right to respect people's privacy,
it opened the door for me to say,
"Well, hold on. You say that, but what about this?"
This Peter Andre story was published in the News of the World
and was read by millions of people.
She compared, um, Peter Andre's, um, genitalia to a chipolata.
[chuckles] And at that point, all of us in the jury box were like,
"Oh, okay." [laughing] "This is how this trial's gonna be."
[reporter 2] She was asked if it was respectful to share the story.
Rebekah Vardy said that it was something she deeply regretted.
[Freeman] In the end, the judge dismissed it as evidence.
She says, "Just 'cause Rebekah Vardy had done this 18 years ago,
it has no relevance to today."
I'm not one to question the judge, but personally for me, as an observer,
I felt that was a pretty good way to establish
who Vardy was from the first day.
-[chattering] -[shutters clicking]
[Lunt] The Peter Andre article was one illustration
of the kind of things that she's done in the past,
and a key part of our strategy was to put forward to the court
that Mrs Vardy was someone who had a practice of leaking to the press.
[Hurworth] In the first batch of documents
that we received from Rebekah Vardy's team,
some of the messages had been redacted…
but the redactions hadn't been properly applied.
[Sherborne] And when we looked at them in electronic form,
the way in which they had been redacted disappeared.
So we were able to see what was underneath.
[Hurworth] "Caroline: Image omitted.
Bex: She's a nasty bitch.
Caroline: She's trash.
Bex: I've taken a big dislike to her.
She thinks she's amazing.
Would love to leak those stories."
Rebekah Vardy's lawyers' position was
the stories that Rebekah Vardy was talking about in that message
didn't relate to Coleen Rooney,
and therefore, they weren't relevant to the case.
Our position was,
if Rebekah Vardy is talking about leaking stories about Coleen Rooney,
or about anyone else, then it's relevant.
So, as a result of a court order, we got more documents.
[reporter 1] Rebekah Vardy was giving evidence
on the second day of her libel trial against Coleen Rooney.
-[shutters clicking] -[chattering]
[Lunt] When we looked at those documents,
we discovered that there had been discussions
between Becky Vardy and Caroline Watt
leaking stories about other high-profile individuals.
"Bex: Mahrez not turned up to training again.
Lads are fuming.
Caroline: Really? I can tell someone.
Bex: Yeah, do it."
Here in court, we were getting these actual text conversations
of Rebekah telling her agent to leak stories about Premier League footballers.
In Rebekah Vardy's witness statement,
she said that it was just a joke.
It's just their sort of banter.
But one of the messages couldn't possibly be a joke.
[reporter 2] Rooney's lawyer alleging
she turned her connections to her husband, Jamie,
allegedly trying to sell a story about one of his former teammates Danny Drinkwater.
[Sherborne] "Bex: Story. Danny Drinkwater arrested.
Crashed his car drunk with two girls in it.
Caroline: Fuck. When?
Bex: I want paying for this."
The fact that, in the message,
Rebekah Vardy said that she wants paying for this,
demonstrates that she was serious.
[Coleen] When I seen them messages,
I was surprised where there was money involved.
I just thought the reason she was doing it was to--
to keep a relationship with The Sun.
[reporter] Vardy has admitted trying to leak a story to a national newspaper,
though claims it was a one-off.
[Morgan] What's not unusual
would be famous people giving stories to the papers.
Happens all the time.
But just because somebody has done something here,
it doesn't automatically follow they also did
do what Rebekah Vardy was accused of doing to Coleen Rooney.
[paparazzo] Coleen!
[Freeman] At that point,
some of the journalists who were there with me
felt that there was a kind of fatal flaw in Coleen's team's case.
We were getting these stories about Peter Andre and Danny Drinkwater,
but they didn't have conversations between Caroline Watts and Rebekah Vardy
discussing leaking stories about Coleen.
And that did feel like a hole in the centre of the case.
[Coleen] Every day after court, when me and Wayne got back to the hotel,
I didn't know how I was gonna feel.
Whether I wanted to be around people, like, in the hotel restaurant,
or whether I wanted to be on my own.
[dings]
So we had stopped off at… [sucks teeth]
…a Tesco and bought some… [clicks tongue]
…noodles and crisps and waters to keep in the hotel room. [chuckles]
[Wayne] I knew I wanted to support Coleen in the court,
but then it was more actually in the hotel.
Just to try and, you know, forget about it for a few hours
and just calm her and settle her down,
because that's where you can start overthinking things.
[Hurworth] Once the day is finished,
we would have a little debrief with Wayne and Coleen.
I'd not dealt with Wayne that much before the trial,
but he was just fascinated by the whole thing.
Yeah, no. It-- [chuckles]
It was interesting, because I do like, um, crime documentaries
and, um, in particular, the different techniques the two barristers used.
Wayne started suggesting, like, legal argument that we should start running.
[chuckles]
I just said, "Wayne, shut up, and just let David or Paul speak."
I'm not saying he's a modern-day Columbo but, yeah, he certainly--
Had we given him a gown and a wig, he'd been up for--
He was-- He was bang up for asking a few questions.
[chuckling] He was then gonna apply for law school,
and he had all these plans. [chuckles]
But them little moments carried us through.
[reporter 1] The eyes of the world turn again to the Wagatha Christie trial today
as Rebekah Vardy's cross-examination continues.
[reporter 2] Rebekah Vardy arrived at the high court,
once again, without her husband, Jamie Vardy,
who had scored twice for Leicester City last night.
[fans chanting] Jamie Vardy, your wife is a grass!
Throughout the trial, it was never reported as a serious matter.
[commentator] There's an element of soap opera about it.
This is great. This is our World Cup.
People said we were like two schoolgirls in the schoolyard fighting.
[reporter] Two WAGs locked in mortal combat
over who said what to whom, about whom and via whom.
[Coleen] A lot of people were getting a buzz
out of the whole Wagatha Christie thing.
She's a WAG and she's a detective.
It was madness.
[Boshoff] I think it was covered as a fun spectacle to be enjoyed.
And I think that was probably equally unfair on both parties,
because it was actually a very serious reputational matter for them both.
[Freeman] On the last day of Rebekah's cross-examination,
this was the moment I realised that Coleen's team had more than I'd expected.
[Hurworth] Before trial started, I was in the office
looking at the WhatsApp messages between Rebekah Vardy and Caroline Watt.
I knew that, on the 8th of April, 2019,
Coleen uploaded onto her Instagram account the gender selection story.
And I saw the WhatsApp message between them was…
[Coleen] "Bex: Coleen's Instagram.
Wonder if they are going for baby five.
Caroline: I already saw it. I can't believe she posted it.
Bex: Maybe she's just put it to see if anyone gives it to the media.
Caroline: I think that might be the case, so attention seeking either way."
It surprised me that they knew I was doing that,
but what they didn't know was I'd hid the story
from all my other followers, except that account.
[Hurworth] Four months after that exchange,
the gender selection post was leaked to The Sun.
And then I knew that on the 22nd January, 2019,
Coleen had uploaded the picture of the car with the dent in it.
I also knew that, on the same day,
Rebekah Vardy and Caroline Watt attended the National Television Awards
with Andy Halls and some other journalists from The Sun.
And then I saw their WhatsApp exchange three days later.
[Coleen] "Caroline: Halls is trying to do a story on Coleen crashing her car,
but her PR won't even reply.
I've told him I'm a hundred per cent confident that it happened
but don't know how.
Bex: Ha ha. She defo did."
[Hurworth] I knew that the same day as those messages,
the car crash article was published in The Sun by Andy Halls.
And Coleen posted on her Twitter account, "Someone is betraying me."
And then the message between Caroline Watt and Rebekah Vardy is…
[Coleen] "Bex: You seen Coleen's Twitter?
Caroline: Just looked.
Such a victim. Poor Coleen.
And it wasn't someone she trusted.
It was me."
-"It was me." -"It's me."
Caroline Watt was the leak.
[reporter] Her agent did leak information from Coleen Rooney's private Instagrams
to The Sun newspaper.
[Freeman] And then Sherborne said,
"Mrs Vardy, your agent is saying here that she leaked these stories about Mrs Rooney,
and you didn't reply."
[Sherborne] At no stage does Rebekah Vardy say,
"What are you talking about, Caroline?
You leaked this information?"
What we have is complete silence.
[reporter] While Rebekah Vardy was being accused,
she broke down in tears, slumping forward, putting her head on her hands,
and twice the judge had to suspend proceedings to give her time to recover.
[Coleen] It was painful watching it,
and, in a weird way, I felt for her,
because she chose to go to court
and to put herself in that situation.
It wasn't nice.
-[shutters clicking] -[chattering]
[reporter 1] Rebekah Vardy's evidence lasted almost 12 hours,
spread over four days.
[horn honks]
[reporter 2] Coleen Rooney is expected to give evidence tomorrow.
[Coleen] The night before I was going on the stand, I was terrified.
And I thought, "Are the nerves going to get the better of me,
and I could fall to pieces on that stand?"
[birds chirping]
I get through life saying to myself,
"Come on, Coleen. It's fine. You'll get through this."
This was my chance to deliver my truth.
[reporter 1] Today was the first time Coleen Rooney has ever spoken publicly
about her contentious social media post.
[reporter 2] Wagatha Christie herself takes the witness stand.
[shutters clicking]
Wayne said, "You're gonna be fine.
Just go on there, um, and be you."
[Wayne] I remember saying to Coleen,
"You just go and be honest, and tell the truth.
The public will see that you're genuine."
[person coughing]
[Coleen] When I was on the stand, Rebekah's barrister said
that some of my followers were companies and shops,
and how was that private?
[Morgan] Social media is public.
Coleen may as well have gone to a local Tube station and gone,
"Hello. I've got all these secrets about my life, and I hope no one tells anyone."
-That's-- What could come out of this? -Have you got 300 friends?
Have you got 300 friends?
[Morgan] If I was to broadcast stuff about my life to 300 people,
I wouldn't have any expectation of privacy,
particularly if I was a famous WAG,
married to one of the most famous footballers in the country.
[Coleen] He asked me about a juicing business,
and I said she was a friend of mine
who makes the juices in her back kitchen,
and it's only her that runs that account.
[whooshes, beeps]
The children's clothes shop,
and I said, "She's a friend who I've known for years."
Coleen always had an answer.
She was totally unflustered.
[Coleen] He asked me about the gym, and I said it was my brother's.
So it's not because it's a business
and I don't know who's running that account.
I know the person first-hand
and had an answer to every one of the followers that he questioned.
[Sherborne] Coleen gave her evidence extremely well,
but the case was never going to turn on her evidence.
[reporter 1] Mrs Rooney told the court she believed
Mrs Vardy leaked her private information.
But when asked, "What's the evidence?" she replied, "I don't know."
That is the question that's at the very heart of this trial.
[shutters clicking]
Did we definitely think we were going to win? No.
We still didn't have the direct evidence
that Rebekah Vardy had leaked that material to The Sun.
[shutter clicks]
[reporter 2] Venom has been shed inside Court 13.
Money has been haemorrhaged.
[reporter 3] The next part of this story will be written by the judge
who gave no date for her decision.
-The suspense continues. -[shutter clicks]
[Coleen] After the trial, there was a sense of relief.
I felt that I'd done all I could, and there was nothing else I could do.
I started relaxing a bit more.
[Wayne] Yeah, it was great to get back home.
Back to reality. Back to normal life.
But then you could see, there's still that thing in the back of her mind,
which is, she's waiting for the judgement.
[Sherborne] The more days went past, the more nervous you become.
"When are we gonna find out?
What's the result gonna be?"
[commentator 1] It's been over ten weeks since the court case ended.
[commentator 2] We are all absolutely desperate.
[commentator 1] We've been holding our breath since May.
[thunderclap]
[reporter] The moment has finally arrived.
The high court has made its final judgement.
[Coleen] I felt like it was GCSE results day,
that nervous, butterfly feeling.
I was 50-50.
I just did not know what way it would go.
[presenter] Bringing you some breaking news that's coming in then.
This is in a case regarding Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney,
and the latest-- the decision that's just come in,
is that Rebekah Vardy has lost…
Rebekah Vardy has lost her libel case to Coleen Rooney.
I'd, uh-- I couldn't process it. It was--
I swore, and that was… [chuckles] …the only thing I did.
I just-- I just swore, and I--
I teared up, and it just didn't sink in.
[reporter 1] Neither Vardy nor Rooney was at the high court to hear the outcome,
but in a damning high court judgement,
Vardy was described as an untrustworthy witness
who is likely to have destroyed potentially crucial evidence on purpose.
Vardy says, "The judge got it wrong", and that she can't accept the decision.
Straight away, my phone just started pinging,
and messages started coming through.
[reporter 2] In the judgements,
Coleen Rooney was described as having given honest and reliable evidence,
and crucially, her original post with the accusation
was ruled to have been substantially true.
[Danielle] I was at a wedding in Spain, and I was just finding out,
and we sent a little celebratory drink picture…
[shutter clicks]
…as a "thank God that's over".
[shutter clicks]
[presenter] Well, let's cross now live to the high courts in central London.
What's been the reaction then?
[Freeman] I was surprised at how pro-Coleen the verdict was
and how much the judge had seen through Rebekah Vardy's evidence.
[reporter] She called it inconsistent, evasive,
and said it needed to be treated with considerable caution.
[Freeman chuckles] It was an extraordinary vindication for Coleen.
She had done something kind of incredible really.
She really exposed the truth of how these stories get into the papers
in a way that no one's really done before.
I thought Rebekah Vardy was trying to be queen of the WAGs
by giving tabloids stories about Coleen
in exchange for them then writing positive stories about her.
[Boshoff] Who does she know about?
Coleen is the most famous person she knows about, right?
So this is her greatest currency.
[reporter 1] One of Britain's most expensive libel cases ever.
[reporter 2] Mrs Vardy is now expected to foot most of the legal bill,
estimated at three million pounds.
-[Coleen] You okay? -Hi, Coleen. How are you doing?
-Yeah. Good. Thank you. -Good to see you.
-Hiya, Col. How are you? -Hi, Paul. You okay?
Yeah, good. Thank you.
Okay, so in terms of where we are now, the case is obviously done.
The judgement is over.
Mrs Vardy's confirmed that she's not going to appeal it.
So, the only thing that remains therefore is to recover the costs.
It was a pathetic reason to go to court.
I wish we could have settled it.
I wanted to settle it.
The money was absolutely ridiculous,
and… [sighs] …I mightn't get all my money back.
It's an item-by-item statement of all the costs you've incurred.
So, if I give you an example, it's your disbursements, VAT, so forth.
And the court will then look at the amount of costs if we can't agree them.
But, for me, getting justice for telling the truth is the most important thing.
[birds chirping]
What do you want for breakfast?
What cup do you want?
I feel like a massive weight's been lifted.
What have you decided, Cass?
From when the first Instagram post went in the paper to the court case,
must've been four-and-a-half years.
-Wow. Look how smart you look. -No.
[Coleen] I can now focus on everything that's important to me.
We all make mistakes in life.
And when someone holds their hands up and says, "I've done wrong"…
-[child muttering] -[Coleen] Why are they like that?
…you can forgive and you can move on.
Mum, my nose is bigger.
-[Coleen] Your nose has got bigger? -Yeah.
[Coleen laughs] Why? 'Cause you're going into reception?
-Yeah. -[Coleen chuckles]
But she's still denying and still saying it wasn't her,
so it makes it a hard thing to do.
That's it.
-[shutter clicks] -Reception boy.
-Right, go on then. All get in together. -[child] Mum, is it--
-[Coleen] Klay-- Get in together. Quick. -[shutter clicks]
It's a nice feeling to be back.
[producer] And any more leaks from your Instagram?
[sucks teeth] No.
There's been no leaks from my Instagram since I put that post up.
That says a lot.
[crowd cheering]
["Someone You Loved" playing]
♪ This all or nothing way of loving Got me sleeping without you ♪
[crowd cheers]
♪ But I need somebody to know ♪
♪ Somebody to heal ♪
♪ Somebody to have ♪
♪ Just to know how it feels ♪
♪ It's easy to say ♪
♪ But it's never the same ♪
♪ I guess I kinda liked the way You numbed all the pain ♪
♪ Now the day bleeds into nightfall ♪
♪ And you're not here To get me through it all ♪
♪ I let my guard down ♪
♪ And then you pulled the rug ♪
♪ I was getting kinda used to Being someone you loved ♪