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So, the "Wagatha Christie" libel trial has come to its conclusion, with Rebekah Vardy losing her libel case against Coleen Rooney. But what did the judge actually say - and how did the two women react?

Here is a quick catch up of some of the key details:

• In her ruling, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled the claims made by Rooney in her Twitter post were "substantially true"
• Mrs Justice Steyn said it was "likely" Vardy's agent, Caroline Watt, passed information to The Sun

• Vardy faced "vile abuse" from the public following Rooney's reveal tweet, Justice Steyn wrote
• In a statement, Rooney said she is "pleased" the judge ruled in her favour, but that "it was not a case I ever sought or wanted"
• Vardy said she is "extremely sad and disappointed" with the ruling but she does not intend to appeal
• Vardy could now be left to cover Rooney's legal costs to the tune of more than £2m

Image source, Getty Images

There were some well-known names who came up in the trial.

Peter Andre's anatomy was discussed at great length. Or not great length, if you believe what you read in Rebekah Vardy's unflattering kiss-and-tell story about the singer.

The News of the World article from 2004 was dredged up again in court. Vardy said the article was "shameful" and the now-defunct tabloid had "misrepresented" a lot of things she had said. She said she had since messaged Andre and his partner privately.

After coverage of the case brought the article back under the microscope, Andre responded online, saying he was glad she had acknowledged she had written it "because her ex-husband forced her to do it".

The trial judgement accepted that Vardy regretted giving the interview and acknowledged that her words could have been twisted. However, it said there was potential relevance in the fact the interview was given to journalist Jane Atkinson, who Vardy later spoke to for articles in The Sun in 2017 and 2019.

"Ms Rooney relies on evidence of Ms Vardy’s relationships with journalists from The Sun as supportive of her case," it said.

Image source, Getty Images

Another TV personality who cropped up in the trial was Gemma Collins.

Vardy appeared to concede that, in a WhatsApp message that was read to the court, her agent had admitted leaking a story from Coleen Rooney's private Instagram account about an alleged car crash.

After Rooney posted that someone she trusted was betraying her, Watt wrote to Vardy: "It wasn't someone she trusted. It was me."

Asked why she didn't challenge her agent about that, Vardy said she had been too distracted because she was bathing her children while watching Collins' infamous "faceplant" on Dancing On Ice.

Although Coleen Rooney successfully defended the libel claim brought against her by Rebekah Vardy, one part of her argument was rejected by the court.

Rooney defended the publication of her social media post accusing Vardy of leaking the stories on the basis it was true - and in the public interest.

But while the High Court ruled in Rooney's favour, finding the accusation she made was "substantially true", it said her "belief that publication was in the public interest was not reasonable".

Explaining the decision, the court's judgement, external said to successfully defend herself on the grounds of public interest, Rooney would have had to give Vardy an opportunity to respond to the allegation.

"It is no answer to that point that Ms Rooney anticipated that Ms Vardy would deny the allegation," the court added.

For a few years now you might’ve been trying to figure out who coined the term Wagatha Christie.

It’s… Phoebe Roberts.

Back in October 2019, Phoebe was a new mum in London.

Holding her three-month-old baby in one arm while scrolling on her phone with the other, she spotted Coleen Rooney’s tweet about her online detective work.

"It was this amazing story with the dot dot dot ending," says Phoebe.

"It had a lot of drama in it. So, I was just like, this is a detective novel or something, and that's when I came up with Wagatha Christie.”

Her joke was a play on the term Wag and Agatha Christie, who was famous for her detective novels.

But although it's made newspaper headlines - and become a nickname for the court case - it didn’t lead to a job with the tabloids for Phoebe – she’s now living in Belgium as a film curator.

"It is probably my one good joke I've ever made, so I'm glad I got to share it around," she laughs.

Phoebe has never made a penny from her online gag, but has enjoyed finding how far it has travelled.

"When my friends see it around they text me, so I think you can get it on a phone case, on socks. It's in a lot of strange places now," she says.

Vardy was nervous but Rooney relaxed during trialpublished at 15:18 British Summer Time 29 July 2022

15:18 BST 29 July 2022

Lizo Mzimba
BBC News correspondent

Image source, Julia Quenzler

I was sitting in Court 13 at the Royal Courts of Justice when Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney were questioned in the witness box.

While both have spent years in the public eye, giving evidence under oath in a high-profile trial at the High Court is probably an incredibly intense and difficult experience.

At times, Vardy seemed nervous and edgy.

By contrast, Rooney did seem much more relaxed and comfortable.

Although it should be said that the issues Vardy was being questioned on - leaking information and betraying trust - can be seen as being of a different magnitude to the questions put to Rooney about the robustness of her "sting operation".

The judge was fairly unequivocal in her assessment, saying she found it "necessary to treat Ms Vardy’s evidence with very considerable caution" and "significant parts of Ms Vardy’s evidence were not credible".

By contrast, she said: "Ms Rooney was an honest and reliable witness."

Match of the Day's Gary Lineker has been on the ball with a different type of commentary this afternoon.

The ex-England footballer has scored a brace of Twitter jokes so far today - one more and it'll be a hat-trick.

Court felt quiet as judgement was releasedpublished at 15:03 British Summer Time 29 July 2022

15:03 BST 29 July 2022

Victoria Bourne
BBC News

It was finally judgement day in the Wagatha Christie case - but here at the Royal Courts of Justice it felt rather.... quiet.

Gone were the dozens of paparazzi, the women at the centre of the argument, their footballer husbands and expensive legal teams as, unlike in sentencing a criminal case, today's result was delivered online.

During the trial, photographers had to have sharp elbows to get the prized shots of either Rebekah Vardy or Coleen Rooney arriving at court. While they weren't here today, television news required pictures from outside to help tell the story.

As it approached midday, a group of journalists huddled together in the shadows of the High Court all frantically checking their phones and laptops.

It was at precisely 12:01pm an email landed in my inbox with Mrs Justice Steyn's 75-page judgement, however not everyone received it and my BBC colleagues, as well as other broadcasters, were all vying to see the outcome.

Such is the interest of the case, a documentary camera crew was there to record the moment that we all discovered Rebekah Vardy's case had been dismissed.

Moments later, correspondents sprang into action to share the news many had been waiting for.

Image source, Reuters

Rebekah Vardy has just spoken out after losing her libel case against Coleen Rooney, saying she does not intend to appeal against the ruling.

"The case is over," she says in a statement.

She also issues plea to people who have been "abusing me and my family" to stop.

Vardy says she is "extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached", adding that it is not the result that she had expected and does not believe is just.

"I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge's finding," she says.

"The judge accepted that publication of Coleen's post was not in the 'public interest' and she also rejected her claim that I was the 'Secret Wag'. But as for the rest of her judgement, she got it wrong and this is something I cannot accept."

Things could not have gone much worse for Vardypublished at 14:43 British Summer Time 29 July 2022

14:43 BST 29 July 2022

Colin Paterson
BBC News

Image source, Reuters

This is what it came down to: At midday some of Britain’s finest legal minds gathered around an iPad outside the High Court shouting "is it there yet? Is it there yet?"

At two minutes past the hour, an email arrived from the Judicial Official and a massive 290-point document detailing Mrs Justice Steyn's judgement was opened.

Suddenly the media lawyer Jonathan Coad and the BBC’s legal correspondent Dominic Casciani were trying to flick to the bottom to see the outcome. I’d not seen fingers moving that quickly outside of a game of Subbuteo.

And there it was, point 290: "For the reasons that I have given, the claim is dismissed."

"Rebekah Vardy has lost!" they shouted in unison.

A quick read of the summary revealed things could not have gone much worse for Rebekah Vardy today.

Her evidence was described as "not credible".

The judge said it was likely that she had deliberately deleted a WhatsApp chat was her ex-agent Caroline Watt.

I thought back to that moment in May of Vardy's fourth day giving evidence in the High Court, when Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne accused Vardy of lying under oath.

I was in court sitting no more than five feet from her and saw her react by putting her head in her hands and heard her sobbing. Repeatedly.

The court was stopped to give her time to recover.

At the time I thought she looked like she was thinking: "Why on earth have I brought this court?"

And boy will she be thinking that today.

Natasha Johansson
Executive producer of the It's... Wagatha Christie podcast

Image source, .

When Coleen Rooney revealed her unexpected sleuthing skills with a now famous tweet concluding "it’s……….. Rebekah Vardy’s account", it captured the Twittersphere's imagination.

Some Twitter users jokingly asked Rooney if she would consider negotiating Brexit.

And the courtroom has had no shortage of tweeted-about moments.

But it’s worth remembering the impact social media trolling has had on Vardy and her family. She described it as "public abuse on a massive scale” and the judge also said some of what she faced was "vile".

If you're feeling out of the loop, we covered all the twists and turns on our podcast It's… Wagatha Christie, hosted by Abi Clarke.

Subscribe now on BBC Sounds and you'll get notified when we drop another episode poring over the judgement later today.

Image source, Reuters

The so-called Wagatha Christie trial has "captured everybody's imagination", says Antonia Foster, a partner at the defamation specialist law firm Carter-Ruck.

"I haven’t known anything like this," she tells BBC Radio 5 Live.

"When you step back from it, it’s perhaps not the most serious of disputes, but it certainly commanded a considerable number of column inches."

The case has raised issues about social media and libel laws, and how posting an allegation about someone online compares to publishing one in print.

"As this case has proven, you very much can sue on allegations published on social media," she says.

"I suspect that despite the fact that Coleen Rooney is the victor today, she probably didn’t anticipate that posting would cause the lengthy trial that it has done."

Shortly after the judgement, Rooney said she felt the case should never have reached court.

Image source, Reuters

As we've been hearing, the judge says Rebekah Vardy knew about the disclosure of several of Coleen Rooney's private Instagram posts to the Sun newspaper.

It's likely her agent, Caroline Watt, undertook the direct act of passing the information to a Sun journalist, the judgement says.

Let's take a closer look at some of posts in question:

The car crash post

Rooney posted a close-up photo of the side of a car, showing that it had been crashed into, with the words above "RIP half a Honda". In court, Vardy didn't accept that she told her agent about the post, but the judge didn't accept that, citing earlier text messages exchanged between the pair.

The pyjamas post

Rooney posted a photo of her husband and their three sons sitting up in bed wearing matching spotted pyjamas. The next day, a headline in the Sun read “Wayne Rooney is back at home – and in bed with Coleen – as she shares snaps with pals celebrating Halloween together”.

The gender selection post

Rooney posted a photo of the back of a plane seat, saying: "Let’s go and see what this gender selection is all about." The post was fabricated. An article was later published in the Sun with the headline "Coleen Rooney travelled to Mexico to look into £8k ‘gender selection’ treatment in desperate bid to have baby girl".

The flooded basement post

Rooney uploaded a photo of a bottle of wine with the caption: "Needed after today [grimacing face emoji]…flood in the basement of our new house…when it seemed to be going so well.”

The judgement says there was "compelling evidence" that the fabricated post was only visible to Vardy's account. A headline in the Sun later read "Wayne and Coleen Rooney’s £20million ‘Morrisons mansion’ flooded during Storm Lorenzo".

Image source, PA Media

In the last few minutes, we've heard from Coleen Rooney who says she's pleased the judge ruled in her favour - but that the case should never have gone to trial.

Rooney says she made "every effort" to avoid a "drawn out and public court case".

Her friend and TV personality Lizzie Cundy says Rooney repeatedly "reached out to Rebekah [Vardy] to try to come and solve this in some way" - but to no avail.

"This is three years ago [now]," she tells Sky News. "A lot has gone on since then - the pandemic, there's a war in Europe, the high cost of living... and Coleen really didn't want this to go to court."

The entire ordeal was "such a waste of money", she adds.

Cundy claims that she herself offered to get together with the pair and "sort this out" over a "few Proseccos and some nuts".

And now, she adds, "maybe Rebekah's thinking 'I should've listened'".

Image source, Getty Images

The footballer-turned-manager Wayne Rooney was with his wife throughout the trial, holding her bag and opening doors, but he looked away as she told the court they had split up for a period.

His ex-international team-mate Jamie Vardy - who scored four goals for Leicester City while the case was going on - made his High Court debut on day six, arriving hand-in-hand with his wife.

The football stars seemed to acknowledge one another at first, unlike their other halves.

Jamie Vardy's first trip to court came on the day Wayne Rooney testified that then-England manager Roy Hodgson had asked him to have a word with Vardy about his wife being an unwanted distraction around Euro 2016.

Wayne recalled the chat in detail, saying he had a coffee while Jamie drank an energy drink.

However, Vardy said outside the hearing that no such conversation had taken place.

Dominic Casciani
Legal Correspondent

Not only does Mrs Justice Steyn say that Vardy's evidence was "manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible", as we've been reporting she concluded that the loss of some of her WhatsApp messages with Caroline Watt wasn't an accident, as was claimed in court.

The finding that Vardy likely deleted her WhatsApp chat with Watt, her former agent, and that Watt deliberately dropped her phone in the sea is highly significant.

It's an assessment that evidence was destroyed, and one that a judge does not make lightly.

We've watched the drama between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy play out on social media right from the beginning.

So as the Wagatha Christie case closes, it seems fitting to let the people of Twitter who have been following the case have their say:

Dominic Casciani
Legal Correspondent

There's a reason why the London libel courts are busy - if you win, you win big.

That's because the stakes are often so high - public figures defending public reputations - and such high-risk work comes at a cost from specialist expert lawyers.

Rebekah Vardy's loss means she gets no damages - but Rooney's side are now entitled to send her a whopping bill.

In principle they can ask for every penny of her costs - but very often a judge will limit that.

So how much? Libel lawyers tell me that Vardy's bill could be north of £2m ($2.4m). Given her husband, Jamie Vardy, earns top football wages, it won't mean they'll be on soup and bread - but it is still going to sting.

Image source, Reuters

In a statement issued to the PA news agency, Coleen Rooney said: "Naturally, I am pleased that the judge has found in my favour with her judgement today.

"It was not a case I ever sought or wanted. I never believed it should have gone to court at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others.

"Both before and after my social media posts in October 2019, I made every effort to avoid the need for such a drawn out and public court case. All my attempts to do so were knocked back by Mrs (Rebekah) Vardy.

"This left me with no alternative but to go through with the case to defend myself and to end the repeated leaking of my private information to The Sun.

"These leaks from my private Instagram account began in 2017. They continued for almost two years, intruding on my privacy and that of my family. Although I bear Mrs Vardy no ill-will, today's judgment makes clear that I was right in what I said in my posts of October 2019.

"Finally, I would like to thank all of my legal team, my family, friends and everyone who supported me, including the public, through this difficult and stressful time."

We've been hearing from media lawyer Jonathan Coad, who says the case has been "an absolute disaster" for Rebekah Vardy.

"What makes it even more tragic is that four times Coleen really tried to settle this case", he tells the BBC News channel.

Vardy suffered "terrible brand damage" during the cross-examination by Coleen Rooney's lawyer, David Sherborne, he says.

"More damaging, though, is that she's effectively been branded a liar," he adds, explaining that Vardy denied leaking stories under oath.