Wayne Rooney's biggest scandals as I'm A Celeb's Coleen speaks out - from cheating rumours to drink driving
Wayne Rooney is one of the most successful footballers in recent history and England's all-time record goal scorer. However, while his professional life has soared his personal life has faced a fair few ups and downs. Over the years, the father of four has been involved in some scandals inevitably widely reported by the newspapers.
Wayne and his wife Coleen Rooney, who share sons Kai, Klay, Kit, and Cass together, have undergone a lot of public scrutiny amid the sports star's indiscretions, and she has recently said she has "learnt to live" with his behaviour. Appearing on ITV's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, Coleen opened up to Oti Mabuse about her husband Wayne’s career as a professional football player, and being thrust into the public eye at such a young age.
She revealed: “All he wanted to do was play football, he struggled with the fame side of it, he hated that. If he could’ve just played football and had none of the fame I think he would’ve been happier within life.
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“He’s made mistakes along the way, but from 16, obviously you’re going to, that’s life.” Oti agreed, saying: “You have to learn to be resilient at a young age, but he didn’t ask for that and it’s quite unfair on him as well that he had to be so strong so young.”
Explaining they got married young at 22, and engaged at 17/18, Coleen admitted:“We felt older, because we had to grow up quick, because we were living in the public eye. A paparazzi took a photograph of me going to school and that was in national papers, it’s been difficult times.”
She added: “Since the first mistake he’s made, that’s been in the public, people have not forgiven. When things have happened the public have wanted it to just go oh, split, you know, that's it, split them up. But the fact is, there's always been love still there. It has been difficult, but we're happy now, after all those years… we're a team.”
From drink driving to questionable late night company, let’s take a look at some of the incidents he’d probably rather forget.
While the couple have been married since 2008, their relationship has been plagued by cheating scandals much earlier, with reports Wayne cheated with three prostitutes in 2002. During a clip from the upcoming documentary, Coleen shared: "I think the first time [he cheated] we were young so there was a lot of arguing."
In 2002, age 16 and at the start of his football career, Wayne was caught on CCTV ten times visiting a massage parlour in Liverpool for £45 a session. He paid Charlotte Glover, then 21, £140 to sleep with her - and she later revealed he left her an autograph as a souvenir.
The next month, he had sex with a rubber catsuit clad 48-year-old grandmother known as 'Auld Slapper'. After the story broke in 2004, Wayne later issued an apology, saying: "Foolish as it now seems I did on occasions visit massage parlours and prostitutes.
"I now regret it deeply and hope people may understand that it was the sort of mistake you make when you are young and stupid. It was at a time when I was very young and immature." Coleen later wrote in her autobiography that she'd forgiven him because the hook-ups occurred before their relationship became serious.
"The truth is, and I've never said this before, at that time in our relationship I'd never even slept with Wayne," she said. "I was only 16 and we weren't having that kind of relationship at that stage. We used to meet at the chippy or the cinema."
In 2009, when Coleen was pregnant with their first child, Wayne was reported to have paid prostitute Jenny Thompson £1200 per night on seven different occasions. Jenny later appeared on Ex on The Beach where she deemed the footballer "nothing special" and said she used untraceable pay-as-you-go mobiles to arrange meet-ups.
Coleen temporarily left the family home after Kai was born, however, forgave Wayne before the end of the World Cup. However, the following year it was alleged that Wayne had paid Jenny and another prostitute for a threesome. Both Jenny and Helen Wood apologised to Coleen through the press and claimed Wayne had 'instantly regretted' what happened.
"Why the hell did I do that?" he reportedly asked the women while sitting on the hotel bed in a bathrobe. "He said, 'I feel really s**t already - I'm begging you two not to say anything. It will ruin my marriage if it gets out. Having a kid means everything to me,'" Helen Wood, who went on to win Celebrity Big Brother, claimed he said.
Coleen forgave Wayne and gave birth to sons Klay in 2013 and Kit in 2016. However, in 2017, while Coleen was pregnant for the fourth time, Wayne was pulled over for drink driving with a woman in the passenger seat of his car. Coleen is believed to have called Laura Simpson, who insisted nothing happened between the pair.
"She asked me to tell her what happened," Laura told the Sun On Sunday. "She seemed unhappy with the fact that we had left a nightclub in a cab together to go to my car." The mum-of-one claimed the footballer ogled her breasts before they had a “kiss and cuddle”, later claiming “we would have ended up sh*****g no doubt”.
Coleen forgave Wayne in an emotional public statement, admitting that she had come close to ending their relationship. The striker later said: “Sometimes you make mistakes. I held my hands up. I made a mistake. “I knew straight away I had made a stupid mistake and I have to move on.
“It is not nice. I’ve got children and it is not nice for them to see that and I try to move on and learn from it which I feel I am doing.” The footballer later pleaded guilty and was banned from driving for two years and ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work.
In 2019, shortly before the Rooneys temporarily relocated in Washington DC, Wayne was arrested for public intoxication after touching down on a flight from Saudi Arabia. An incident report claimed: "Mr Rooney had a strong odour of alcoholic beverage about his person, slurred speech, and was unsteady on his feet, and was not travelling with anyone. "Mr Rooney was placed under arrest for public intoxication."
The sports star later said he had been left "disorientated" by prescribed sleeping tablets he took on a flight while drinking. One month later, while Coleen was in the UK, Wayne was seen partying late into the night with barmaid Vicki Rosiek in Florida's Clearwater Beach. Later the same year, again while Coleen was away, Wayne was spotted walking through a hotel lobby and into the lift with a mystery woman at 5:36 am after a night of partying.
At the time, Coleen removed her wedding ring amid speculation the marriage was over. Speaking on Amazon Prime documentary Rooney, Coleen said that she believes alcohol has a lot to blame when it comes to Wayne's past behaviour. Coleen said: "But I do think that alcohol has a lot to blame...and still has, from things that have happened recently. I think it’s not a good thing for Wayne to be unsupervised.”
