The moment when Rebekah Vardy first told me about Peter Andre’s chipolata
WE had been chatting and laughing for half an hour when I asked Rebekah Nicholson, as she was then, what exactly Peter Andre was like between the sheets.
The bubbly 22-year-old did not hold back: “When he pulled down his trousers I couldn’t believe it. It was like a miniature chipolata.”
Everyone giggled that day — Wednesday, March 10, 2004 — at the photographic studio in Clapham, South London, where the now Mrs Vardy had come to reveal all about her brief romance with the Mysterious Girl singer after he had appeared on I’m A Celebrity.
The tale was retold — to similar amusement — in the Wagatha Christie libel trial in London’s Royal Courts of Justice earlier this month.
Over crisps and cola, she said Peter had lied about being in a relationship when he met her and made her cringe by trying the same chat-up lines on her that he had used on Katie Price, and boasting about his “touch of magic” with English girls.
This was nearly two decades ago, when “kiss and tell” interviews were commonplace. They were all about fun, with a large splattering of amazing sexual anecdotes.
Becky happily posed for photos. She was very much as she is now — beautiful, confident, groomed and intelligent. But also fun — and open.
The headline the next Sunday read: “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes . . . then falls asleep.”
It wasn’t a front-page story and with the lack of the gigantic internet presence we have now, it could easily have been forgotten.
But this month in London’s Royal Courts of Justice, everyone in Court 13 was laughing too when this story was unearthed by Coleen Rooney’s legal team.
Becky, now 40, claimed in court she was coerced into giving the interview: “It was something I was forced to say.”
It certainly wasn’t by me. But weeks after our chat she told me it had been her then-boyfriend who suggested she speak out. Not her idea — but she went along with it.
She has since apologised to Peter. As have I. He is an utter gentleman.
I interviewed him years later and, to his credit, he didn’t hold a grudge and was warm, understanding and friendly. He has even publicly joked about it.
I have interviewed Becky since then too. I always like chatting with her but she is much more guarded now — sometimes stand-offish after years of hard knocks.
She has talked about her troubled relationships, post-natal depression, attempted overdose and her own sexual abuse.
Those interviews were to help others — and to promote herself.
And by 2019 she finally thought, aged 36, she had cracked it — a happy marriage to top-flight footballer Jamie Vardy and a profile she had fought for.
Then Mrs Rooney made her accusations.
Becky, in turn, pursued this case, which has fuelled the most expensive catfight of all time — and nobody could stop her.
She said in court that the Peter Andre story is one of her biggest regrets but I would imagine bringing this libel case against Coleen beats anything else now.
Becky says she suffered anxiety and ended up in hospital three times, fearing she would lose her baby because of the abuse she received after Coleen’s post.
And her career tumbled as she lost lucrative book and brand deals.
Wayne Rooney says the past two years have been “very traumatic” for Coleen too and he has watched her struggle “and become a different mother and different wife”.
Whatever the outcome, this hearing has been catastrophic for both women, who are more similar than they would like to admit.
While Becky has faced a catalogue of battles before her marriage, Coleen has endured more than any wife should have to during hers.
The masks of steel they have worn going into court are no act. Both women have built them up over the years.
And this will be killing each of them because everything they have fought for is being destroyed.
Wayne Rooney has been supporting wife Coleen at court every day Credit: pixel8000
Rebekah gave her now-infamous interview to showbiz journalist Jane Atkinson Credit: Jane Atkinson
Peter Andre
Rebekah and Jamie Vardy
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