Coleen Rooney set to give evidence at libel trial

Coleen Rooney is expected to give evidence to the High Court on Friday as part of the libel claim brought by fellow footballer's wife Rebekah Vardy.

On day four of the trial, Mrs Vardy is due to be questioned by her own barrister before Mrs Rooney takes to the witness box for the first time.

Mrs Vardy became tearful several times on Thursday as she was was accused leaking stories, which she denies.

She was also accused of having thrown her agent "under the bus".

This was after Mrs Vardy appeared to accept that her agent Caroline Watt leaked information from Mrs Rooney's private Instagram account to a newspaper, but denied it was "new" information.

Mrs Vardy, the celebrity wife of Leicester City striker Jamie, has faced more than 10-hours of cross examination from Mrs Rooney's barrister, David Sherborne.

So far Mrs Rooney has watched on, alongside her husband, former footballer Wayne, making notes throughout the process.

A focal point of the trial has been some WhatsApp messages, between Ms Watt and journalists, which are not part of the trial because the PR's phone fell into the North Sea while she was on holiday in Scotland.

Mr Sherborne said on Thursday it was a "shame" that messages where "lying at the bottom of the sea in Davy Jones's locker".

"Who is Davy Jones?" Mrs Vardy asked.

Mrs Justice Steyn, who will ultimately decide the outcome of the case, not a jury, explained that the reference "just means the bottom of the sea".

The court also heard that Mrs Vardy claimed she was unable to disclose all the messages between her and her agent, who is "not fit" to testify, because they were deleted as she tried to export them for disclosure.

The so-called "Wagatha Christie" trial centres on a viral social media post from October 2019, in which Mrs Rooney said she had carried out a sting operation to find out who had been passing private information about her life to the Sun newspaper.

Mrs Rooney claimed, in a now famous post online, that she had clamped down on her privacy settings so that the only account that could have seen three fake stories she had posted - which later appeared in the tabloid - belonged to Mrs Vardy.

The fake stories Mrs Rooney planted on her Instagram featured her planning to return to TV, travelling to Mexico for a "gender selection" procedure and the basement flooding at her home.

On Thursday, Mr Sherborne discussed an interview Mrs Vardy had given to the Daily Mail following Mrs Rooney's allegation, which the claimant said in court she had given in order to "diffuse" the situation.

Asked by reporters if the two of them had argued, Mrs Vardy had answered: "That would be like arguing with a pigeon," that would defecate in your hair.

In his closing argument, Mrs Rooney's barrister told Mrs Vardy: "So when Mrs Rooney wrote on the 9 October that she was right in suspecting you and your account... She was right, wasn't she?"

"No, she was wrong," Mrs Vardy replied.