Rebekah Vardy compares court sketches of her and ‘potato’ Wayne Rooney from Wagatha Christie trial

Rebekah Vardy extraordinarily branded Wayne Rooney as looking like a ‘hot potato’ in his court sketch from the Wagatha Christie trial.

The 40-year-old has revealed she gave the unedifying nickname to the former England striker after online commentators said she looked like ‘something from Lord of the Rings’ in court sketches of herself during the six-day court case.

The mother-of-five, who says she has been left with PTSD following the high-profile legal battle, has also claimed her husband Jamie was targeted by trolls who sent him death threats during the feud.

These included messages telling him to die and others warning him to ‘watch out’ as people were after him.

The mother-of-five has continued to speak out after the explosive libel trial brought on when Coleen Rooney accused her of leaking stories about her personal life.

Last week the judge in the trial, Mrs Justice Steyn, found Coleen had not libeled her by making the claim and tore apart Rebekah’s witness testimony, saying ‘significant’ parts of her evidence were ‘not credible’. 

Speaking in an interview with the Sun, the same paper Coleen accused her of leaking stories to, Rebekah took aim once more at the Rooneys.

Rebekah said Coleen’s husband Wayne looked like a ‘hot potato’ in a court sketch after a commenter said she looked like ‘something out of Lord of the Rings’ in a depiction of herself.

She says in response she snapped: ‘I’d rather look like something out of Lord of the Rings than a hot potato.’

The court sketches of Rebekah, Coleen and Wayne were among the hottest talking points during the six-day long trial, with many lampooning how little resemblance they actually bore to their subjects.

Social media commentary saw the participants of the trial likened to boxing stars, potatoes, Michael Jackson and even tapestries from the 1400s.

Wayne Rooney was described as looking like Henry VIII, boxer Tyson Fury and even a potato during the trial, in a series of unflattering comparisons.

Rebekah, who had decided to take the case to trial, was described by online commentators as looking like Michael Jackson, while Coleen was described as looking like ‘Norman Bates’ mother’.

The one of the three women behind the court sketches later told MailOnline that they weren’t allowed to sketch in the courtroom, so had to go from memory when doing the drawings.

Priscilla Coleman added that they also had fast deadlines to hit, meaning mistakes would sometimes be made, and said the public criticism of her work did hurt.

She said: ‘You can’t work properly because it makes you think your work will be attacked. It slows you down, it gets you out of the workflow. It makes it difficult.

‘You just really have to put it out of your mind. You can talk to people about it but there’s people who don’t want to discuss it or give interviews about it.

‘Everyone has good and bad days. Sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw.’

In the interview with the Sun, Rebekah also defended her husband, Leicester City footballer Jamie, who she described as her ‘rock’ and hit out at Wayne for his evidence in the witness box. 

When called into the trial, the then-Derby County manager had claimed he talked to Jamie during the 2016 Euros on behalf of England manager Roy Hodgson. 

He told the court he had spoken to his England teammate to ‘calm down’ Rebekah, after complaints she was ‘causing problems and distractions’ for the team during the tournament.

After this Jamie, who did not give evidence in court, made a statement outside the High Court accusing Wayne of talking ‘nonsense’ and said that conversation had never taken place.

Rebekah says her husband had not testified in the trial because ‘I didn’t ask him to’ and ‘you can’t give evidence unless you give a witness statement’.

She added: ‘Wayne essentially called my husband a liar, so that’s why he had to give a statement afterwards.’

In the interview she added that he husband had been targeted by ‘trolls’ who sent him death threats. 

The Sun reports that three people have been arrested by police looking into threatening messages sent to him.

Among the messages were threats saying: ‘Jamie better watch out — the cocky c*** people are after him, so beware.’

It added another made reference to Rebekah’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! by saying: ‘You should’ve gone to the jungle and died of a snake bite instead.’

She told the paper her husband had been ‘resilient’ but hit out at people for abusing her family during the course of the feud. 

‘It doesn’t matter what people’s opinions are about me, they shouldn’t be attacking my husband or children,’ she said.

‘I draw the line when you subject them to vicious, disgusting hatred, and abuse my husband.

‘This has nothing to do with him. It was these threats that got my attention and it is hurtful.’

Earlier this week Rebekah took another swipe at the libel trial’s judge, by saying she didn’t feel she had understood the case.

Speaking to TalkTV’s Kate McCann, the mother-of-five said she isolated herself from the public following Coleen’s Instagram post and felt ‘as though she ‘didn’t even want to be here anymore’. 

She said that she withdrew from the public gaze due to the stress she felt when being abused both in the street and online.

This stress, she was told by her doctor, could have sent her into premature labour.

‘I was trying to be mum to the four children that were here and to protect my baby as well,’ she said. 

‘There was a really high probably I was going to go into preterm labour.

‘It was the worst feeling,’ she added.

 Rebekah added: ‘I just wanted normality to resume. I felt for the kids, the ones that were innocent in this.

‘They’re too young to understand how any of this happened. You’ve got to focus on your family and help your kids.’

She added: ‘The kids were driven to school in cars with bin liners on the windows because of the press intrusion, it just went crazy. I was just a normal mum and now I’m a mum being called all sorts of things.’

Reflecting on the trial, she said: ‘Do I feel let down? I feel let down by the legal system.

‘I had a judge that didn’t really know the case, and read what was said in the media.’

She told The Sun in an interview: ‘I am extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached.

‘It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding.’

Mrs Vardy was told by a High Court judge that her evidence was ‘evasive and implausible; and was accused of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case.

In her ruling, the judge said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, ‘undertook the direct act’ of passing the information to The Sun.

But she added: ‘Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.

The judge added: ‘In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.’

The bombshell verdict from Court 13 of the High Court was handed down remotely online last week by Mrs Justice Steyn just over two months after the trial in May.

Mrs Vardy’s failed libel suit has been branded the most ill-advised in history.

However she still insists she was not the person who leaked the stories about Mrs Rooney to the media.

During the interview with Ms McCann, Mrs Vardy repeatedly said that she did not leak the information to the press.

She recounted the first time that the wives spoke, after Mrs Rooney posted the accusation online.

Mrs Vardy said she asked Mrs Rooney what the post was about.

‘You know what this is’, Mrs Vardy said she was told in reply.

‘I really didn’t know why she’d say that or where it had come from.

‘I was absolutely devastated because I didn’t do it.’

‘I went into court telling the truth. There’s some things I’m not proud of, but I never leaked stories about Coleen Rooney.’

Mrs Rooney believes ‘everything that needed saying was said’ in the judge’s ruling that humiliated Mrs Vardy last week and left her with a £3million legal bill, in what has been branded one of the worst own goals in British legal history.

Coleen also dismissed Rebekah’s suggestion she was ‘milking it’ by wearing a moon boot to court by sharing a shocking X-ray of her foot break sustained after a fall in March. The picture showed her little toe had been shattered.

The 36-year-old, who wore the protective footwear every day during her High Court libel battle with Rebekah, broke her little toe following a fall in March at the Rooneys’ £20million mansion in Cheshire where the couple live with their four sons.

Mrs Rooney was said by friends to ‘be in quite a lot of pain’ and initially had to use crutches.

Her husband, former Manchester United and England striker Wayne, broke his metatarsal just weeks before the 2006 World Cup in Germany but he managed to play in the tournament.

A source said: ‘It was handy for Coleen, Wayne knows all about foot injuries.’

Rebekah now faces a legal bill that could total £3million after the case which left her reputation in tatters.

MailOnline can reveal that the case will now return to the High Court on September 12 for a costs hearing – at which trial judge Mrs Justice Steyn is likely to take a dim view at being told by Rebekah following the verdict that she ‘got it wrong’ and felt she was ‘let down by the legal system’.

Costs hearings are convened to work out exactly how big a share of the legal bill the losing party will be saddled with – and whether the costs incurred are reasonable.