Rebekah Vardy's ex denies he forced her into Peter Andre 'chipolata' interview
Rebekah Vardy's ex-husband Steve Clarke has denied accusations that he forced her into a kiss-and-tell interview about Peter Andre where she compared his manhood to "a mini chipolata".
On the first day of the Wagatha Christie libel case, under questioning about selling the story on Mysterious Girl singer Andre before she became famous, Vardy had blamed second husband Clarke who she had previously accused of being abusive during their relationship.
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She told the High Court: "I was in a terrible, terrible relationship. The consequences of not doing something were far worse than doing it."
Vardy, now married to footballer Jamie Vardy, also said: "I was forced into a situation by my ex-husband to do this. It is something that I deeply regret."
However, Clarke has told the Mail on Sunday that the claims are false and the interview was all her idea.
Clarke, who was married to Vardy for a year from 2005 and met her in 2001 when she began working for his company, told his version of how the 2003 News of the World interview had come about.
He said of when he first became aware of her at work: "Rebekah was chatty, fun and pretty, but I didn't know much more until everyone started talking about her spending the night with Peter. She had told colleagues and it became the talk of the office, Within a week of it happening, everybody knew what had happened. She could not keep it quiet."
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Vardy, then Rebekah Nicholson, later started dating Clarke and he says that she chose to respond to a call-out in the newspaper for stories about that year's I'm A Celebrity contestants, who included Andre.
He said: "I asked her why she would want to do that and she replied that it would be a bit of money for her and it would be funny. I told her she should do whatever she wanted to do."
Clarke claims his only involvement was to drop her off at and collect her from the interview, which he was told he could not sit in on.
Andre released his own statement in a video on social media after the incident was brought up at the trial about Coleen Rooney's accusations that Vardy was leaking stories to the press about her.
He said: "“Fifteen years this has been going on and I kept quiet and I didn't say anything, and I let everyone have their laugh and I let everyone say what they wanted to say.
“Now, she's gone to court and admitted that the story was made up, and she did that because her ex-husband forced her to do it. Fair enough but, put that all aside, and just think how it feels that if a man — or if I had said this — about her anatomy, or a man had said something about a woman's anatomy, and made up something. You can use your imagination of saying something very unflattering.
"There would be outrage. There would be absolute outrage."
Vardy's rep told the Mail on Sunday of Clarke's interview: "Mrs Vardy is all too aware of the harrowing truth about this individual and no amount of misogynistic victim shaming will change this."
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