Two years ago, Coleen Rooney's lawyers urged Rebekah Vardy to seek a mediated solution to her libel claim, warning that the full public glare of legal proceedings would not be an enjoyable experience.
Instead, Vardy chose to take the case to trial and after three days in the witness box, being cross-examined on highly personal matters, told the high court she felt bullied and manipulated by the process.
It is not only the two footballers wives who have had their personal lives raked over as a result of the libel case, there has also been a litany of other people unwittingly dragged into the proceedings.
In 2004, a 22-year-old Vardy sold a kiss n tell story of a one night stand with Andre to the now defunct News of the World tabloid. Two decades later, Rooney's lawyer read out the story in court as evidence that Vardy did not respect people's privacy. Andre has had to deal with speculation about the size of his chipolata appendage reaching a new audience in the process. Andre has said he has put up with being the butt of jokes for more than 15 years and asked if people would laugh if the comments were about a woman.
The story had faded away from memory until court disclosures revealed that Vardy had tried to pass details of the car crash to a journalist at the Sun. Vardy said she wanted to leak the story because she abhorred drink drivers but the court heard how Vardy messaged her agent with the information, and added: I want to pay for this x Riyad Mahrez and the 2017 18 Leicester City squad.
The court heard that Vardy discussed with her agent the Leicester City squad's dislike of on striker Mahrez. Rooney's lawyers suggested that Vardy gleaned information about the state of the dressing room from her husband, the Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, and then leaking it to the press. Vardy denied that she was just idly gossiping about how the players might feel and had never discussed with her husband whether the lads were fuming The journalists discussed by Vardy and her agent were just idly gossiping about how the players might feel.
The proceedings have been uncomfortable for some journalists who were not even involved in the stories that prompted the libel case, but have nonetheless found themselves mentioned in court. At one point the high court heard Vardy discuss with her agent whether to leak a story to Sky Sports reporter Rob Dorsett before concluding : I just don't want it coming back to me In another way, Vardy s agent praised Sun journalist Amy Brookbanks because she always writes nice stories, does whatever I ask her and gets stories changed that she hasn't even written Caroline Watt.
Vardy's former agent and close friend is the ever-present but never-seen character in the Wagatha Christie trial. It was Watt's phone that was dropped off the side of a boat in the North Sea soon after a legal request was made to search it, and now it's Watt who Vardy suggests is leaking stories from Rooney's Instagram page to the Sun. After being thrown under a bus by Vardy at the last minute and amid reports that she had urged Vardy to drop the legal proceedings before trial, Vardy said Watt is too ill to give evidence in the case.