Like a phone dropped in the North Sea, Vardy v Rooney is full of absolute gold | Marina Hyde

The lost mobile that could have explained it all, the jaw-dropping quotes, the battle of the outfits ... the only ones benefiting from this libel case are the rubberneckers

There are battles. There are libel battles. And then there is ... Wagnarok. Yesterday afternoon, several hours into her cross-examination in the high court, Rebekah Vardy returned from an emotional break in proceedings to observe from the witness box: It's been a very long few days." Yeah, well. Chat shit get banged.

It was Rebekah's husband, Jamie Vardy, who first uttered that deathless adage, back in 2011 when he was playing non-league football, though weirdly he wasn't actually making a heavily ironic comment on Britain's libel laws. Spool forward to the present day, though, and we have to ask: which shit-chatter is getting banged in the high court? Is it defendant Coleen Rooney, against whom Rebekah chose - actually chose! - to bring this action, with Vardy's pretrial legal costs alone estimated at 1m? Or is the shit-chatter in fact the sender of messages including [I] would love to leak those stories", and I want paying for this"? Or, to put it much more iconically, is the shit-chatter ... Rebekah Vardy's account?