From girl next door to Wagatha Christie trial defendant … a well-remunerated stint on I’m a Celebrity could be the remaking of the still-private media personality

Hearing about Coleen Rooney signing up for the new series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! (launching tonight) was a surprise. It’s such a classic “footballer’s wife” move. One former IACGMOOH campmate is Rebekah Vardy (wife of Jamie, striker for Leicester City), who took part in 2017 – the very woman Rooney defeated in the infamous 2022 Wagatha Christie libel trial.

However Rooney, wife of former England and Manchester United player Wayne, is not a typical footballer’s wife. Self-contained, reserved, something of a working-class queen, the mother of four is the antithesis of the red-carpet “plus one”. She barely did the Wag thing, except at big tournaments, and even then without the designer gusto of others with their Brazilian blow-dries and Gucci heels, rather smiling serenely in the spectator box like a Premier League Eva Perón.