Rebekah Vardy ordered to pay £1.5m towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs over Wagatha Christie trial
Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay £1.5m towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their Wagatha Christie libel trial.
In a ruling issued on Tuesday, Judge Justice Steyn said Vardy must pay 90% of Rooney’s costs, and that an £800,000 down payment must be paid by 4pm on 15 November.
In the case dubbed “war of the wags”, Rooney incurred eyewatering costs of more than £2 million. However, £350,000 of those costs had already been racked up ahead of the trial, so were removed to produce a final figure of £1,667,860.
The final costs ruling will be confirmed once Rooney submits her final total costs bill.
Although the exact figure of Vardy’s own costs is not known, it’s likely to be a similar amount to Rooney’s, stretching into the millions.
Vardy has also been ordered to pay part of the costs of seven journalists who were potential witnesses but did not actually give evidence in the week-long trial. Rooney has also been ordered to pay a portion of their costs.
Vardy lost her libel case against Rooney in July.
Vardy with husband Leicester City striker Jamie
The case centred around a social media post published by Rooney on 9 October 2019, in which she accused Vardy of leaking stories about her to the press.
The post led to Rooney being dubbed “Wagatha Christie” on social media – a nod to the world-famous British crime novelist Agatha Christie.
Vardy, who had denied being responsible for leaking Rooney’s personal information, announced she would be taking Rooney to court in June 2020, with the trial finally reaching the High Court in May this year.
However, the case didn’t go Vardy’s way, with the court finding the essence of Rooney’s social media post was “substantially true” – that’s to say Vardy was responsible for leaking Rooney’s private information to the press.
In her ruling, Judge Steyn described Rooney’s evidence as “honest and reliable”, but labelled Vardy’s evidence “manifestly inconsistent… evasive or implausible”.
Coleen and Wayne Rooney arrive at court
In the order made public on Tuesday, the same judge said Vardy had “deliberately deleted or destroyed evidence”, calling such behaviour “outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct of proceedings”.
For this reason she said costs would be assessed on an indemnity rather than a standard basis – a decision which is more favourable to Mrs Rooney in terms of the amount of her legal bill she can recover.
However, the judge also explained her decision to only order 90% of Rooney’s costs to be paid by Vardy, citing Rooney’s “weak” allegation that Vardy was one of the people behind The Sun’s Secret Wag gossip column, and Rooney’s unsuccessful public interest defence.
Davina McCall has said her short-term memory is “a bit remiss” as she recovers from brain tumour surgery.
Speaking from her bed, the visibly emotional TV presenter posted a short video updating her Instagram followers on her condition, saying it had been a “mad” time.
She expressed an “enormous heartfelt thank you” to people who had messaged her after she revealed this month she had a benign brain tumour, a colloid cyst, which she described as “very rare”.
Looking bright, but with a visibly bruised left eye, McCall said: “My short-term memory is a bit remiss.
“But that is something I can work on, so I’m really happy about that. I’m writing everything down, to keep myself feeling safe.”
She added: “It’s been mad, and it’s just really nice to be back home, I’m on the other side.”
In a message posted with the video, she reiterated her thanks for all the support she has received, adding: “Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed. Have a couple of sleeps during the day which keeps my brain clear… Slowly, slowly…”
When she first shared her diagnosis, she said chances of having it were “three in a million” and that she had discovered it several months previously after a company offered her a health scan in return for giving a menopause talk.
The 57-year-old star said support from her fans had “meant the world”.
She said she was being “brilliantly looked after” by her partner, hairdresser Michael Douglas, and her stepmother, Gabby, who she calls mum.
Becoming tearful, the presenter said: “I’d quickly like to say big up the stepmums. I don’t really say thank you to Gabby enough. She’s been an amazing rock my whole life.”
McCall was estranged from her birth mother, Florence McCall, who died in 2008.
McCall with 2002 Big Brother winner Kate Lawler. Pic: Rex Features
With a catch in her voice, McCall went on: “I’ve got a massive dose of vitamin G – I’m just really grateful. I’ve always been really lucky in my life, but I feel unbelievably grateful right now. So, thanks for everything, all of you.
“I’m on the mend, I’m resting and sleeping loads and I feel really good. I’m just very lucky.”
Stars including presenter Alison Hammond, singer Craig David and radio host Zoe Ball quickly shared their delight at the positive update.
McCall rose to fame presenting on MTV in the mid-1990s, and later on Channel 4’s Streetmate, before becoming a household name as the host of Big Brother from 2000 to 2010.
McCall with her MBE, alongside her partner Michael Douglas and her daughter Holly Robertson. Pic: PA
She’s gone on to present programmes across the networks, the most recent being ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad.
Last year, McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Married twice, McCall has three children, two daughters and a son, with her second husband, presenter Matthew Robertson.
She has lived with Douglas since 2022, and they present a weekly lifestyle podcast together, Making The Cut.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, the bestselling novelist who wrote A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91.
The Leeds-born author, who sold more than 90 million books, died peacefully at her home on Sunday after a short illness and was “surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.
Taylor Bradford, who was often labelled “the grand dame of blockbusters”, hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.
The story sold millions of copies and traced the journey of Emma Harte from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire.
The rags to riches story was followed by many other successful books with the author’s works being published in more than 40 languages across 90 countries.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
The author on her 21st birthday. Pic: Bradford Enterprises/PA
Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of publisher HarperCollins, said the author was a “natural storyteller”, adding: “Barbara Taylor Bradford was a truly exceptional writer whose first book, the international bestseller A Woman Of Substance, changed the lives of so many who read it – and still does to this day.”
Taylor Bradford, who was made an OBE in 2007 for services to literature, wrote a total of 40 novels during her career – her most recent was The Wonder Of It All, published last year.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
Taylor Bradford with her husband Robert in 1993. Pic: PA
Born in May 1933 as the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor, she worked as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter and then the paper’s first woman’s editor.
At the age of 20, she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman’s Own and the London Evening News.
She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they married in London on Christmas Eve in 1963 before moving to New York the following year.
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The couple were married for 55 years until he died from a stroke in 2019.
Following a private funeral in New York, the author will be buried alongside her late husband at the city’s Westchester Hills Cemetery.
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