In May 2022, a two-week libel trial at the high court in London dominated the front pages of the UK\u2019s tabloid press. The case represented the culmination in a long-running saga that had held the public imagination for three years: the Wagatha Christie affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Colleen Rooney, whose husband Wayne Rooney is England\u2019s leading goalscorer, was suing Rebekah Vardy, the wife of another prominent England footballer. Vardy sued Rooney for libel in 2020 after Rooney accused Vardy of leaking personal stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun newspaper. Rooney\u2019s accusation had been made on Twitter<\/a> in 2019 following the sting operation she conducted to catch Vardy in the act, earning her the title \u201cWagatha Christie\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you\u2019d expect, breathless newspaper accounts of proceedings were accompanied by a whirlwind of public speculation on social media. Now, a theatre dramatisation of the case, Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial<\/a>, is attracting sell out audiences to London\u2019s West End.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Agatha Christie connection doesn\u2019t end there, however. Online punsters have already branded the affair \u201cThe Scousetrap\u201d<\/a>, a portmanteau of Rooney\u2019s Liverpool roots and Christie\u2019s The Mousetrap. The producer of the Wagatha play, Eleanor Lloyd, was also behind the revival of Christie\u2019s Witness for the Prosecution<\/a>, which has been running at London\u2019s County Hall since 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To continue reading, please click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article originally appeared on The Conversation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/a> has been used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarah-Jane Coyle looks at the new theatre dramatisation of the Vardy v Rooney case which is attracting sell out audiences to London\u2019s West End.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2417,"featured_media":8684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"