When Coleen Rooney became a mother, she quit her lucrative showbusiness career for a more traditional role as a housewife.
At the time, back in 2010, she was queen WAG, having inherited the crown from Victoria Beckham. It was a profitable role, which landed her a £5million fortune courtesy of best-selling books, a perfume and her popular ITV2 reality show, Real Women – plus all the trimmings, holidays and designer outfits that go with having a husband earning £300,000 a week.
But along came little Kai, the eldest of her four boys, and everything changed. She decided to take herself out of the limelight.
Coleen was determined to give her son as normal a life as possible. She also wanted to support her husband, who would go on to test her patience and loyalty to the hilt numerous times over the course of their 16-year marriage.
‘I’m staying at home to look after the boys,’ she told me in 2010 when Kai, now 13, was just a few months old (the plural ‘boys’ being a somewhat prescient observation considering what was yet to come).
Coleen Rooney has now decided to sign up to the most watched reality show on television – ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here
‘I’m loving motherhood and being at home with Kai. I’m doing a few little projects but that’s it. I love being a mum. Motherhood is it for me.’
And she meant it. Coleen and Wayne went on to have three more sons, Klay, 11, Kit, seven and Cass, five.
Although dragged into the headlines over Wayne’s various misdemeanours, she remained largely in the background – with the exception of the ‘Wagatha Christie’ saga in 2019, in which Coleen famously locked horns with, and ultimately triumphed over, fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy.
So it is particularly baffling that she has now decided to sign up to the most watched reality show on television – ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here.
There will be no luxuries – just terrifying Bushtucker trials, rice and beans for dinner and, inevitably, much bickering with her campmates.
To those on the outside it seems bizarre that Coleen, 38, would take part, especially considering that she and Wayne are reportedly worth a staggering £140 million, and certainly don’t need the money.
Sources close to the couple say that Coleen, with her youngest child now at school full-time, finally feels ready to pick up the threads of her former career.
Yet others suggest there may be another, impish reason for her choosing this particular show for her big comeback.
Let’s not forget that her nemesis, Rebekah Vardy, is a member of the I’m A Celeb alumni, having appeared on the show in 2017 (where she was the third contestant to be eliminated).
The two remain bitter rivals since Rebekah, 42, unsuccessfully sued Coleen for accusing her, publicly, of leaking stories about her family to tabloids. Coleen had outed Rebekah as a social media ‘mole’ after setting an ingenious trap on Instagram.
‘It’s a fantastic opportunity to wind Becky up,’ said a source. ‘Coleen has got a mischievous side to her. While she has been dignified with how she dealt with being dragged through a court by Becky, it is bound to come up and Coleen has always been honest about the situation.’
While ITV are yet to formally announce the programme’s line-up this year, insiders at the channel say they ‘can’t believe they have got her’ and are ‘super excited’ at having Coleen on the series.
Ms Rooney with Wayne and sons Kit, seven, Kai, 13, Klay, 11, and Cass, five
Rebekah Vardy, is a member of the I’m A Celeb alumni, having appeared on the show in 2017 (where she was the third contestant to be eliminated)
And they are paying top dollar, too. Coleen is said to be getting paid in excess of £1.5 million, a fee comparable to that commanded by Nigel Farage last year and, crucially, around 15 times more than Rebekah received.
I’m told the deal was brokered by Wayne’s notoriously hardcore agent, Paul Stretford, who represents Coleen at his Cheshire-based company, Triple S management and would have been impossible to turn down. It was Stretford who orchestrated Wayne’s move from Everton to Manchester United for an eye-watering £30 million in 2004 when he was just 18.
‘Paul knows how to drive a deal,’ says a source close to the Rooneys. ‘He will absolutely have seen Coleen’s worth and once ITV approached he would have got the best deal he possibly could have done. He will have got her an absolute fortune, you can guarantee that.
‘Paul has been at Wayne and Coleen’s sides since they were teenagers and he has always seen a value in both of them.’ What is raising more eyebrows is that Coleen will be ensconced in the
Australian Outback with very little communication with the outside world, more than 10,000 miles away from Wayne as he manages Championship side Plymouth Argyle.
And with his past form for extra curricular dalliances, many women in her position would be terrified at the thought of jetting to the other side of the world, leaving their husband to his own devices.
Wayne’s rap sheet is legendary: there were the visits to ‘granny’ prostitutes when he was 18 while Coleen was his girlfriend, followed by a threesome with escorts Helen Wood and Jenny Thompson in 2010 at Manchester’s Lowry hotel, when Coleen was pregnant with their first son.
Each time he admitted his mistake and each time Coleen forgave him. More recently, in 2017, Wayne was pulled over by police and arrested for drink driving. Humiliating enough – but the car he was driving belonged to estate agent Laura Simpson, whom he’d met on a night out and they were reportedly on their way to her house.
Coleen took her wedding ring off, prompting rumours that she had dumped him. Weeks later, she released a statement where she declared she was standing by her man.
She wrote on social media: ‘A few people have been feeling sorry for me, please don’t. I appreciate getting cared about, however, I am a strong person, I don’t feel sorry for myself.
‘Also a few people are probably thinking I am stupid for staying in my marriage. I am not stupid, I know my own mind and it’s something I want to try and work on.
‘Before the headlines start… No, I’m not taking Wayne back as he’s never left. Yes, it has been a s*** time, and yes, time was spent apart and I thought my marriage might have been at an end.
Ms Rooney is said to be getting paid in excess of £1.5 million for appearing on I’m A Celeb, a fee around 15 times more than Ms Vardy (pictured) received
Ms Rooney and her husband attend court during the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial where Ms Vardy unsuccessfully sued the former for accusing her of leaking stories about her family to tabloids
‘Wayne doesn’t get portrayed for the person he is in the press, he has always had a hard time. I’m not going to list his good qualities as a person as I don’t think he deserves it at this time but one thing is that he is a brilliant dad.
‘He’s made silly and selfish mistakes, some he’s learnt from, some obviously not. However maybe that will change.’
Friends of the pair say that he has indeed changed. ‘Wayne has grown up a lot in recent years,’ says an associate of the former England captain.
‘Coleen knows how much he loves her and the kids. He works more than 150 miles away in Plymouth, he also managed a team in Washington D.C. while she stayed at home so she is used to him being away.’
Many also observed another side to Wayne as he supported his wife during the highly-publicised, week-long High Court battle with Rebekah Vardy in 2022.
During the trial, Wayne took the stand to support his wife and the pair were seen giggling together.
‘Wayne was right behind Coleen throughout that,’ says a source close to the pair. ‘Despite neither of them wanting it to go to court, and it created so many headlines which were difficult for the whole family, Wayne was her rock during that time.
‘There have been the obvious difficulties but things are good between them.’
After the trial, Coleen was inundated with offers for appearances on television shows and endorsements, which, friends say, has whetted her appetite for a more showbusiness life, away from the drudgery of looking after the family.
As she once revealed to me, her life as a football mum was anything but glamorous.
‘I have a car full of kids, taking them to training every night after school,’ she said.
She revealed how, despite her multitude of lavish holidays and designer wardrobe, she remained very grounded. She always refused to hire a nanny and also does a lot of her own housework – with little help from Wayne.
‘He doesn’t put the rubbish out. He will put things away after himself,’ Coleen told me.
‘He’s not messy, he’s just … I can’t rely on him to do anything. He forgets to do things I ask him. I’ll say, ‘Will you post that letter on the way to training?’ A week later, the letter will still be in the car or his bag.’
If she is using the jungle as an opportunity to irk Rebekah Vardy, so far it seems to be doing well.
Just a day after it was revealed that Coleen was rumoured to be going on the show, a story appeared in The Sun – Rebekah’s preferred newspaper – which outlined how she would sue Coleen if she used the phrase ‘Wagatha Christie’ while on I’m A Celeb as she had trademarked the name following their famous High Court battle.
No wonder hosts Ant and Dec are said to be ‘rubbing their hands together with excitement’ over the fun they will have with their script.
‘Oh, it’s going to be brilliant,’ says one show insider. ‘Wagatha Christie is the gift that keeps on giving.’
A week tomorrow, Coleen will land at Brisbane airport where she will join other celebrities – rumoured to include N-Dubz singer Tulisa Contostavlos, former football manager Mick McCarthy and McFly singer Danny Jones.
Leaving her mother Colette in charge at home, she will swap her £20 million supermansion in Cheshire for a camp bed on the jungle floor, and her trips to the gym and nail salon for trysts with creepy crawlies.
But what about the Rooney clan, will they be joining her at any point?
I’m told that ITV are preparing for Coleen’s family to jet out to Australia, though it is unlikely that Wayne will be there at the end of the bridge to greet her when she leaves the jungle because of his own commitments.
The boys, however, might just make it if Mummy gets to the end, as private school Christmas holidays begin in early to mid-December.
And those close to Coleen say it is for them that she wants to take part.
‘The boys have grown up with Coleen at home being a mum,’ said one source. ‘Now they will get to see her doing something different.’
As indeed will her husband and her rival.