A Brit Explains Wagatha Christie To An American

The new Hulu documentary Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story promises to reveal new details about one of 2022’s most talked-about celebrity court cases. But if you’re like me, you may be wondering: Who and what?

OK, I might be exaggerating a bit. Since I pride myself in being more aware of pop culture phenomenons than the average person, I have heard of the U.K. scandal between two soccer stars’ wives and the ensuing court case. But I had no idea who the women are, what they did, and why the whole thing was called “Wagatha Christie.”

Instead of going down a Wiki rabbit hole, I jumped on a Zoom call with Bustle’s associate editor, Sam Ramsden, who’s based in England and covered the trial last year.

“It was all ridiculous,” Sam tells me. “It was one of those cases where the math just wasn’t mathing.”

Below, Sam answers all of my Wagatha Christie questions and breaks down the trial’s wildest moments — from the courtroom fashions to the mention of a random celebrity’s “chipolata.”

Meet The WAGs

Gaby: I'll start by saying that I know what a WAG is — a wife or girlfriend of a soccer player — and I know who Agatha Christie is. But I have no idea how they come together.

Sam: To start, you need to know who Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy are. The 2006 World Cup is when WAG culture exploded in the U.K. It was like peak celebrity culture. In the U.S., it would have been like the Britney Spears tabloid era. Coleen’s fame grew during that time because she was and is still married to Wayne Rooney, one of the best England and Manchester United players at this peak. He also had a few cheating scandals.

Gaby: Wait, he cheated on Coleen?

Sam: Yes, that’s partly why they are such a famous couple. The tabloid press latched on to him, and Coleen’s always been fairly quiet in the public eye, even though she, at one point, was one of the most famous celebrities in the country.

Gaby: How famous is Rebekah Vardy then?

Sam: Rebekah is not as famous as Coleen. She’s married to Jamie Vardy, who plays for the smaller football team, Leicester City. He wasn’t really a big name until 2016 when his team won England’s biggest football championship, the Premier League. His wife became a bit famous because of that, and then she went on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here in 2017. Have you heard of that?

Gaby: Oh yes. There was an American version of the reality show in the early ’00s.

Sam: She didn’t come across very well on that show. I remember at a time the public disliked her. She was kind of harsh.

A ……….Bombshell

Gaby: So what happened between these two?

Sam: Coleen dropped this bombshell of a statement on social media in October 2019, shocking everyone. She said she started to realize that many of the news stories about her in The Sun, a tabloid newspaper, were from details she only shared on her private Instagram account.

Gaby: How did she figure out who was leaking her info?

Sam: She said she came up with a plan to uncover the leaker. Over the summer, she planted fake stories by sharing them on her private Instagram account. She suspected that it was Rebekah Vardy. So she made those stories private to everyone apart from Rebekah.

Gaby: What were the fake stories?

Sam: One of them was that she went to Mexico for a gender selection treatment, another was she was going to return to TV, and the last was that her basement flooded. She dramatically outlines all this in her statement. And it ends with a now famous line: “I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s ……….Rebekah Vardy’s account.”

Gaby: Wow. What did Rebekah say?

Sam: Rebekah immediately denied everything on Instagram, and said she would take legal advice.

Gaby: I’m guessing Rebekah sued Coleen?

Sam: Yes, she sued Coleen for libel. Coleen reportedly tried to privately settle this a few times before it went to trial, but claims Rebekah’s team rejected to end things amicably.

Gaby: When did the trial begin?

Sam: May 2022.

Gaby: It took that long for this to go to court?! Is this when the case started to become known as Wagatha Christie?

Sam: Wagatha Christie was coined immediately after Coleen’s first statement dropped because, as you can imagine, the amount of memes that followed that statement was tremendous. The hype picked up again when we knew that it was going legal.

A Court Of Looks

Gaby: What happened at the trial?

Sam: It lasted about 10 weeks. In the U.K., court cases can’t be televised, so they have sketch artists draw scenes from the trial, and journalists are live-tweeting from the courtroom. Seeing these sketches and Twitter threads made it much more dramatic and ridiculous because it was treated so seriously. Obviously, it’s a real lawsuit, but it’s a silly story with kind of silly people, which made it all very comedic to the British public.

Gaby: What moments got everyone talking?

Sam: Well, each day, Coleen and Rebekah would arrive at the trial dressed to the nines. So everyone was looking to see what they would wear. It came off as very over-the-top.

Gaby: Who was the best dressed?

Sam: I’m not a fashionista or anything, but I think Rebekah did it best ‘cause she really had that businesswoman look.

Gaby: Did their husbands go to court with them?

Sam: Actually, one of the best moments was when the husbands were said to have politely nodded at each other in the courtroom, which was crazy because their wives were at war! It’s a very British thing to be polite in a situation like that.

Trial By Meme

Gaby: Of course, the husbands couldn’t handle the awkwardness.

Sam: Right, and then there was the Pirates of the Caribbean reference that everyone memed.

Gaby: Wait, what does the movie have to do with this?

Sam: So, some WhatsApp messages on Rebekah’s agent’s phone could not be used as evidence because her agent claims she accidentally dropped her phone in the North Sea.

Gaby: She coincidentally dropped her phone in the sea…

Sam: Yes, and when one of the lawyers told Rebekah it was too bad that the texts were “lying at the bottom of the sea in Davy Jones’ locker,” she replied, “Who is Davy Jones?” People had a field day with it, as the judge had explained who Davy Jones, also a Pirates character, was.

Gaby: What were the messages?

Sam: The messages were to a journalist at The Sun about the leaked stories. Oh, do you know who Peter Andre is?

Gaby: No…

Sam: Right, so he’s an Australian singer with a one-hit wonder called “Mysterious Girl,” which you should definitely Google after this. [Gaby: I did.] He was big in the U.K. in the ’90s, and then he kind of disappeared until he went on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here. He became a big tabloid figure here afterward. Anyway, the trial brought up Peter Andre’s todger — if you know what that is.

Gaby: Yeah, I know what a todger is… But how exactly was that relevant in the case?

Sam: During the trial, to discredit Rebekah, one of the lawyers questioned her about her remarks about Peter Andre in the past when she said, I quote, “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata.” They tried to point out that she doesn’t respect people’s privacy. She said she was “coerced to say” that about Peter in the interview.

A Classic (W)Agatha Christie Ending

Gaby: How random. So who ended up winning the case?

Sam: Even though lots of people on Twitter and even my friends thought that Rebekah actually did leak the fake stories about Coleen, we were partly expecting the judge to take Rebekah’s side just because the courts here, similar to the U.S., want the evidence to be beyond all reasonable doubt. But they ended up ruling in Coleen’s favor!

Gaby: What did Rebekah think of the ruling?

Sam: Rebekah did a televised interview after the whole thing denying everything. And she still completely denies it. But then she said that if she bumped into Coleen now after like three years of total war with each other, she’d be casual and ask her out for a coffee. It was so ridiculous.

Gaby: I have to ask… Do they still follow each other on Instagram?

Sam: I don’t know; let me check… Nope, they aren’t following one another.

Gaby: How about their husbands?

Sam: Wayne Rooney follows Jamie Vardy, but Vardy doesn’t follow him back.

Gaby: What has Coleen said about everything since?

Sam: Coleen has kept a low profile, and so did Rebekah after that interview. Now, Coleen has the Hulu-Disney+ documentary, which is a big deal because it shows her side of the story. So unless Rebekah responds to it, that’s all on Wagatha Christie — for now.

This conversation was edited and condensed for clarity.