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Rebekah Vardy

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Rebekah Vardy
Vardy supporting her husband Jamie at the 2018 FIFA World Cup
Born
Rebekah Miranda

(1982-02-17) 17 February 1982 (age 42)
Norwich, England
Occupation
  • Footballers Wife
Television
Spouses
Mark Godden
​
​
(m. 2001; div. 2003)​
Steve Clarke
​
​
(m. 2005; div. 2006)​
​
​
(m. 2016)​
Children6

Rebekah Vardy (née Miranda; previously Nicholson; born 17 February 1982) is an English media personality who is married to English footballer Jamie Vardy. She was a contestant on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2017 and on Dancing on Ice in 2021. In 2022, she lost a well-publicised libel case against Coleen Rooney, dubbed the "Wagatha Christie" trial. It was determined that Vardy did play a role in leaking fabricated stories about Rooney to The Sun, a British tabloid.

Personal life

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Vardy was born in Norwich and claims she was abused as a child and made homeless at 15.[1] In her 2023 Channel 4 documentary Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah's Witnesses And Me, Vardy claimed that the abuse had been covered up by leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses community of which she was a member.[2]

Her parents – Carlos and Alison – divorced when she was 11 and she moved from city to city, living in Norwich, Reading and Oxford. Vardy's father, Carlos Miranda, was born in Madeira, making Vardy half-Portuguese.[3]

At 17, Vardy met electrician Mark Godden and later married him in Mexico.[1]

In 2014, whilst working as a nightclub promoter, Vardy organised footballer Jamie Vardy's 27th birthday party. She fell pregnant three months later with their first child.[4][5] The Vardys married on 25 May 2016 at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire.[6]

Vardy has six children: a daughter (born 2005) and a son (born 2010, fathered by footballer Luke Foster), and a daughter (born 2014), a son (born 2017), and a daughter (born 2019) with her third husband, Vardy.

She is a stepmother to Jamie's daughter from a previous relationship.[7]

Television

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In November 2017, Vardy was a contestant on the seventeenth series of the ITV reality TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. Vardy was the third celebrity to be eliminated on 4 December 2017.[8] Vardy has made multiple appearances as a guest panellist and presenter on Loose Women.[9] She has also appeared on Good Morning Britain, Jeremy Vine and This Morning. In 2019, Vardy appeared in two episodes of Celebrity Gogglebox alongside husband Jamie, and an episode of How To Spend it Well at Christmas in 2019 alongside her family.[10] In September 2020, it was announced that she would be competing in the thirteenth series of Dancing on Ice in 2021.[8] She was partnered with Andy Buchanan and was eliminated in week 6.[11]

Charity work

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Rebekah and Jamie Vardy are both Family ambassadors to Barnardo's.[12][13][14] Vardy is also a patron of The Dorothy Goodman School in Leicestershire.[15][16] She has supported Leicester based homeless charity 'Homelessness to Hope' having officially opened The Hope Centre [17] and has supported the Jeans for Genes charity campaign.[18] Vardy supported the family of Alfie Evans, an infant boy from Liverpool with a then-undiagnosed neurodegenerative disorder, in their campaign to have him sent abroad for further treatment.[19]

Libel trial against Coleen Rooney

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Main article: Wagatha Christie

On 9 October 2019, Coleen Rooney, the wife of another footballer, Wayne Rooney, made a Twitter post[20] alleging that posts from her private Instagram account were being leaked to the newspaper The Sun. Rooney said that, to catch who was selling the stories, she had restricted access on who could see the posts. She stated that the only viewer of these posts was Vardy's account. This Tweet went viral, being dubbed the 'Wagatha Christie', a portmanteau of the football term WAG and mystery author Agatha Christie.[21] Vardy responded on her own Twitter account, denying the claims and stating that her Instagram had been hacked.[22]

In June 2020, Vardy sued Rooney for defamation.[23] Although Vardy won a preliminary stage in the case in November 2020,[24] in July 2022, following the full trial, the judge ruled against Vardy and determined that Rooney's claims were "substantially true".[25] The judge described Vardy as "an untrustworthy witness" and found that she probably worked with her agent to leak stories about Rooney to the press.[26] Vardy said she was sad and disappointed with the decision, but stated she would not appeal.[27] In October 2022, Vardy was ordered by the court to pay 90% of Rooney's legal costs, which was reported to be a higher proportion than is usual in such cases. The judge made this decision partly because Vardy had been found to have destroyed relevant evidence prior to the trial. As a result, Vardy was ordered to make an immediate payment to Rooney of £800,000 with the remainder to be assessed with the maximum amount set at £1.5m. Vardy's own legal costs were estimated to have been a similar figure, resulting in the total cost for Vardy of the litigation she commenced but lost being potentially around £3m.[28]

In October 2024, a new ruling on the case dismissed a number of Mrs Vardy’s claims and ruled that Mrs Rooney’s team had not committed any misconduct, and therefore it was "not an appropriate case" to reduce the amount Mrs Vardy had to pay.[29]

References

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  1. ^ a b Whilding, Alex (10 May 2022). "Rebekah Vardy's early life, marriages and fling with Peter Andre". BirminghamLive.
  2. ^ "Rebekah Vardy says she was abused during Jehovah's Witness childhood". BBC News. Retrieved 16 May 2023.; Nicholson, Rebecca (16 May 2023). "Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah's Witnesses and Me review – this harrowing documentary will totally surprise you". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
  3. ^ "About Rebekah". RebekahVardy.com. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  4. ^ "#WorldCupWAGs: Wives and Girlfriends of England Stars Rocking the World Cup in Russia". USAHint. 20 June 2018. Archived from the original on 22 June 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  5. ^ "Who is Rebekah Vardy? I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! 2017 profile". Radio Times. Archived from the original on 26 November 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
  6. ^ "Leicester City's Jamie Vardy gets married". BBC News. 25 May 2016. Archived from the original on 25 May 2016. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  7. ^ Watson, Hayley (23 November 2017). "Fans of I'm A Celebrity star Rebekah Vardy blast show for describing her occupation as 'footballer's wife'". Leicester Mercury. Archived from the original on 28 November 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
  8. ^ a b "Rebekah Vardy signs up for Dancing on Ice". The List. 29 September 2020. Archived from the original on 18 January 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  9. ^ "Rebekah Vardy breaks down as she opens up about Coleen Rooney row in first TV interview". Heart. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  10. ^ "Rebekah and Jamie Vardy join Phillip Schofield in How To Spend it Well at Christmas". Radio Times. Archived from the original on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  11. ^ Davis, Barney (28 February 2021). "'It's..Rebekah Vardy' Star booted off Dancing on Ice after 'awful' skate off". Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  12. ^ "Jamie and Rebekah Vardy to become Barnardo's first family celebrity ambassadors | Ethical Marketing News". Archived from the original on 24 October 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  13. ^ "Rebekah Vardy backs top tips to help children celebrate who they are". Barnardo's. Archived from the original on 18 January 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  14. ^ Watson, Hayley (9 November 2018). "Rebekah Vardy cutting the ribbon on new charity shop". LeicestershireLive. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  15. ^ "Rebekah Vardy | Dorothy Goodman School". www.dorothygoodman.co.uk. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  16. ^ "Tweet". twitter.com. Archived from the original on 4 February 2017. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  17. ^ "It's official – The Hope Centre is now open". 21 September 2017. Archived from the original on 18 January 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  18. ^ "Our celebrities Genetic Disorders UK". Jeans for Genes. Archived from the original on 20 September 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  19. ^ Douglas, Nicole (23 April 2018). "Rebekah Vardy fights for Alfie Evans as protestors storm hospital: 'This is a disgrace'". OK! Magazine. Archived from the original on 18 September 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  20. ^ @colleenrooney (9 October 2019). "This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it..." (Tweet). Retrieved 17 January 2021 – via Twitter.
  21. ^ Khan, Coco (13 December 2019). "Why Wagatha Christie was an essential reprieve in a year of dreadful news". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 June 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  22. ^ "Tweet". twitter.com. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  23. ^ Picheta, Rob (23 June 2020). "Rebekah Vardy is suing Coleen Rooney for defamation, a dramatic twist in Britain's WAG wars". CNN. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  24. ^ "Rebekah Vardy wins in first stage of Coleen Rooney libel action". The Guardian. 20 November 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2022.
  25. ^ "Wagatha Christie: Rebekah Vardy loses libel case against Coleen Rooney". BBC. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  26. ^ Waterson, Jim (29 July 2022). "Rebekah Vardy loses 'Wagatha Christie' libel case against Coleen Rooney". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  27. ^ Singh, Anita (29 July 2022). "Wagatha Christie verdict: Rebekah Vardy loses case against Coleen Rooney". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  28. ^ Waterson, Jim (4 October 2022). "'Wagatha Christie' trial: Vardy ordered to pay up to £1.5m of Rooney's legal fees". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  29. ^ "Wagatha: Rebekah Vardy told to pay £100,000 towards Rooney costs". BBC News. 9 October 2024. Retrieved 9 October 2024.
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