Wagatha Christie trial live: Coleen Rooney back in witness box today after revelations about marital problems | UK News

It was a gift to headline writers everywhere – and the man who came up with it admits it may well turn out to be his legacy.

Understandable, then, that Dan Atkinson would speak out after the BBC mis-identified the origin of the phrase Wagatha Christie – crediting someone in Belgium.

Proof that it was his genius can be seen in the tweet below, but the BBC was only partially to blame.

You can presume they searched for the first use of the phrase on Twitter – which would have brought up Dan’s tweet had it not been for a major typo that he’s only just spotted after two and a half years.

Dan had mis-spelt Wagatha as Wagagtha.

Writing about the experience of going viral in the Observer this weekend, he said: “That stray ‘g’ will haunt me until I am under the ground, a gravestone above me with the inscription: ‘Here lies the man who briefly went viral but cocked it up – ‘RIGP’.

“Despite my error, I still maintain that I was first in any meaningful sense and I am happy to go all the way to the High Court to prove my claim. I think it would be only fitting, actually.

“I’ve got nothing to hide; I am willing to have all my messages about Danny Drinkwater and chipolatas repeated from the courtroom floor. We could run the Wagatha trials in parallel, perhaps even negotiate some kind of two-for-one deal with the Royal Courts of Justice?”