Every word ‘love cheat’ Ryan Giggs said on day seven of his trial
Ryan Giggs arrives at court for day five of his trial
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The 48-year-old former Wales manager is accused of assaulting Ms Greville, 37, after a row at their home in Worsley, Greater Manchester on November 1, 2020. Ms Greville told jurors at Manchester Crown Court last week that Giggs “grabbed me by both shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and headbutted me in my lip”.
Giggs, who is also accused of coercive and controlling behaviour towards Ms Greville during their six-year relationship, denies headbutting her and claims there was “minor contact” between their faces as they grappled over his phone.
The former Manchester United player, who is also accused of elbowing Ms Greville’s sister Emma in the jaw during the row, denies all charges.
Giggs gave evidence as part of his defence case which has begun in the second week of the trial.
The footballer was asked questions by his barrister Chris Daw QC.
Here is a transcript of Giggs’ evidence from day seven of his trial:
Mr Daw: You’re well known all over the world for two things, firstly known for your ability and career as a footballer.
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: And you’re known for something else. You have a reputation for infidelity, what the newspapers call a love cheat?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Is that reputation justified?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: You’ve had relationships with women, have you managed to be faithful to any of them?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: If you’re attracted to a woman are you able to resist?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: Are you a flirt by nature?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Have you lied to your ex wife and Ms Greville about being unfaithful?
Giggs: I have yes
Mr Daw: More than once?
Giggs: Many times.
Mr Daw: Have you ever physically assaulted a woman?
Giggs: Never.
Mr Daw: Have you ever set out to control or coerce a woman?
Giggs: I haven’t, no.
Mr Daw: Did you make Kate Greville a slave to your every demand?
Giggs: I didn’t.
Mr Daw: Never in trouble with police?
Giggs: No, I haven’t
Mr Daw: I want to ask you about your early life in terms of schooling and so on. How did school go?
Giggs: School went OK until football got serious.
Mr Daw: When did football get serious?
Giggs: Probably about 12-years-old. I started playing for the local team. My dad was in a rugby team, I played rugby as well, but football was my first love.
Mr Daw: Did others come to recognise your ability from when you were 11 or 12 onwards?
Giggs: Yeah I played for school, I played for my Sunday league team, my team was a Manchester City scout. I just suggested to two or three of the team we should go down and train for Manchester City, which we did for two or three years between 11 and 13-years-old.
Mr Daw: Then what happened regarding football?
Giggs: I was always a Manchester United fan. Sir Alex heard about me. I was a United fan but I was at Manchester City so where I played for my local team, Salford Boys, he came down, watched, apparently liked what he seen and spoke to my mum after the game and asked if I would come down and train with Manchester United. I was 13 at the time.
Mr Daw: Did you transfer your allegiances and your youth football career to the other team in Manchester?
Giggs: Yeah I went for a trial for a week. I stayed in the halls of residence near the training ground in Salford. I loved it, like I said I was a Manchester United fan and at that time at 14 you could sign schoolboy forms which would take me to 16. So a two-year contract which I agreed.
Mr Daw: By this stage your mother met her new partner and your sister arrived?
Giggs: Not at that time no.
Mr Daw: So you transfer to Manchester United. Over the next three or four years what happened in terms of your life?
Giggs: I was looking to play for Manchester United. I played for England schoolboys. I was able to travel. I’d never been abroad before. That was my first chance to go abroad with England schoolboys and eventually be able to go to the next level. I was playing for first team Manchester United and making my debut at Wales also.
Mr Daw: In terms of the impact on that period of time on your life the way you lived your life, can you briefly explain the impact of becoming a Manchester United player at the age of 17, what that did to your life?
Giggs: In a way it didn’t change. I was still hanging round with my same mates from school but it changed in being noticed on the street and articles being written about me whether it be football or my personal life. So it changed in that respect from 17 onwards.
Mr Daw: In short terms what if any impact did your status as a Manchester United player have on your relationships with young women, do you think that made any difference to the way your dating life developed in that way?
Giggs: Just probably got a little bit more attention and maybe perhaps my friends because I was well known and well known especially within Manchester.
Mr Daw: In your late teens, was that something you were enthusiastically embracing, the attention from young women in particular?
Giggs: Yeah I mean my primary concern I was focused on my football but I still had my friends from school so we would still go out, go out on a Saturday night in Manchester and still socialise.
Mr Daw: Did you eventually come to have a relationship with your ex-wife Stacey? When did you meet her?
Giggs: I met her when I was 18 at a BBQ.
Mr Daw: Did you then have something that endured for a number of years?
Giggs: No Stacey was going out with someone for a number of years and so was I. We had mutual friends, we knew each other a long time before we started going out with each other.
Mr Daw: When eventually did you start going out with each other?
Giggs: I would have been 27/28.
Mr Daw: So you had known each other quite some years before that?
Giggs: I had a girlfriend for a couple of years, maybe sometimes shorter
Mr Daw: You started your relationship with Stacey in your late 20s? How long after that did until you moved in?
Giggs: Pretty quickly. Stacey became pregnant with our daughter. Her name is Libby. She’s 19.
Mr Daw: Where did you live in the early stages?
Giggs: Our first house was in the city centre in an apartment.
Mr Daw: Did you move somewhere else when you had the children?
Giggs: We then moved to Worsley where we had both grown up and knew very well.
Mr Daw: Did you have another child with Stacey?
Giggs: Yes three years later I had a son called Zack.
Mr Daw: And what was and is your relationship with your two children?
Giggs: Very good.
Mr Daw: How often do you have contact?
Giggs: Well obviously when we were living together I would see them every day.
Mr Daw: Do you still maintain contact with them now?
Giggs: Every day.
Mr Daw: Do you consider your relationship with the children to be a good one?
Giggs: Very good.
Mr Daw: Over the course of your early relationship with Stacey when the two of you had children, were you always faithful to her in that relationship?
Giggs: No I wasn’t.
Mr Daw: Were you honest with her about whether you were and were not being faithful?
Giggs: I wasn’t honest no.
Mr Daw: I am going to ask about your relationship with Kate Greville. When did you first meet Kate?
Giggs: I met Kate around 2013/2014. Kate was then a PR girl. She worked for Tangerine. Tangerine had been employed to look after a business that me and Gary Neville was involved in and they were to PR cafes, hotels and Kate was the link between the PR company and ourselves. Our first one was Cafe Football which speaks for itself. Somewhere you could go and eat but it had a football type menu, football played on the TVs and somewhere you could have good food, listen to good music and watch sport – especially football.
Mr Daw: A cafe and any other business activity?
Giggs: Yeah the cafe was in London in the Stratford area. But after that we wanted to take it to the next level and we were then involved in Hotel Football which was exactly the same as the cafe, it had a Cafe Football in, all the rooms were football-themed and that’s situated just outside Old Trafford.
Mr Daw: Was there any other business along the way, any other hospitality or businesses developed with Mr Neville?
Giggs: We have got the Stock Exchange hotel in the city centre. It’s more boutique, only 40 rooms. That’s more recent than Hotel Football and Cafe Football.
Mr Daw: How did things develop between you just then?
Giggs: The first time I met Kate I was instantly attracted to her. I thought she was attractive, I thought she was intelligent and funny and right from the beginning it was a professional; relationship. We seemed to get on straight away. When we would conduct interviews Kate was making sure everything was OK so that would be face to face.
Mr Daw: Can you describe the mood between you when you were face to face in meetings or going to and from press interviews and so on? What was the atmosphere between you?
Giggs: We got on really well right from the beginning and we seemed to share the same interests and we just got on right from the beginning.
Mr Daw: Did you know she was married at the time? And did she know you were married at the time?
Giggs: Yes. She did.
Mr Daw: Did you flirt with her?
Giggs: Erm yeah I wouldn’t have said the first couple of times but then after two or three times meeting her I started flirting with her.
Mr Daw: You heard the evidence she gave describing you looking at her in a particular way using her name and so on. The implication you were trying, in some way, to use mind tricks or psychological techniques on her. What do you say about that?
Giggs: It’s true, I was maybe staring at her and I called everyone by their first name. But yeah I would definitely say that I would sort of try and get her attention and look at her.
Mr Daw: Did you have any sense she was in any way uncomfortable?
Giggs: No not really.
Mr Daw: How did it develop? There was a flirtation you describe. How did it develop beyond that?
Giggs: I think just more we got used to each other or we knew each other better we would not be together but as a group with some of the girls she worked with and some of the people working on the hotel we would socialise. We would maybe do an interview and go out afterwards for a drink as a group and I think the relationship developed then in regards to me probably taking that flirtation not to the next level but in a different environment in a bar or restaurant making more conversation with Kate.
Mr Daw: Did she talk to you about the state of her marriage at the time was that a detail she shared with you?
Giggs: Not early on but as we got to know each other a little bit better we would perhaps share more than perhaps the other people who were in the group. We would probably share things about our personal life.
Mr Daw: Was there any sense in your mind either taking advantage of her or manipulating her or anything of that kind?
Giggs: Umm no.
Mr Daw: Did she ever express any discomfort with your conversations and the nature of them during that period?
Giggs: Not to my knowledge no.
Mr Daw: You described how you became closer and had more personal conversations over time. How did things move from that to the next level to the point you became intimate and had an affair? What was the transition?
Giggs: It would be little things like I would whilst in conversation we talked about Kate had been to Gleneagles I also happened to be at Gleneagles and I took a picture and sent her the picture and said ‘Look where I am’ or’ Guess where I am’ and Kate touched on it when she came to hotel to get the shirt signed as well. So that sort of perhaps took it to the next level where we weren’t as a group, especially when Kate came and got the shirt signed. It was just me and Kate.
Mr Daw: Did anything else happen in terms of advancing the nature of your relationship to a more intimate phase?
Giggs: Just more regular contact whether it be messages or speaking to each other that progressed quite quickly.
Mr Daw: Did you ever send pictures of yourselves to each other?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Broadly speaking what kind of pictures?
Giggs: Erm I would perhaps send pictures of where I am maybe travelling and one particular time I remember Kate sending a picture. She was in good shape and she sent a picture of her abs, her stomach, to me.
Mr Daw: Just her stomach? (laughs)
Giggs: (laughs) No it was her gym kit, her crop top. I had never seen her body before. It was the first time I realised she had abs. She was in good shape. I just thought she looked hot.
Mr Daw: So after that how did things move forward?
Giggs: We took it to the next level regarding an interview promoting Cafe Football. We talked about being alone for the first night and that we would do the photoshoot in London at Cafe Football and an interview and we would stay the night before and do the interview the next day.
Mr Daw: Whose idea was it if you can identify, the one of the two of you who made this opportunity to be alone together?
Giggs: I think it was both of us.
Mr Daw: Was there any element where you were pressuring her or vice versa?
Giggs: We were just talking about how we could be together alone.
Mr Daw: It was an opportunity for an overnight stay.
Giggs: Yes it was.
Mr Daw: What was your understanding in terms of communications before the trip to London in terms of what was going to happen in London between the two of you?
Giggs: I think there was a lot of flirtation and sort of innuendos about what was going to happen but nothing was made solid. We were gonna spend the night together for the first time so, I think we knew that we were going to be together that night.
Mr Daw: Do you recall what arrangements were made for the overnight stay?
Giggs: I think Kate sourced the hotel and I think it was a joint thing. I sorted the train tickets out and Kate sorted the hotel room and we travelled on the train together. The manager said ‘Do you want to look at the room?’ The room was really small so I said ‘We can’t stay in here have you got any other rooms?’ and he said ‘Yeah we have this available’, which was a bigger room and we agreed this was a nice room. We dropped our bags off then went to the roof terrace which had a bar.
Mr Daw: Was anyone else you knew staying at the hotel or travelling to that particular interview?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: You arrived and went to the hotel for the bar. What happened after that?
Giggs: We had a few drinks.
Mr Daw: What was the atmosphere like?
Giggs: Yeah we got on really well. We had the interview and pictures the next day so I wasn’t going to have too much to drink. I had a few drinks, it was getting to the end of the night and we went back to the room after we finished two or three drinks.
Mr Daw: Was it the first time you were sexually intimate together?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: And in your mind can you give an indication of what the balance of interest was?
Who if either of you was more enthusiastic or was your perception it was equal?
Giggs: It was equal we went back to the room, we had sex and stayed the night.
Mr Daw: How did things progress? This was a relationship only the two of you were aware of.
Giggs: We were both married. Kate as we got to know each other she started opening up about how unhappy she was in her marriage. I was coming to a stage in my marriage where I wasn’t as happy as I had been. And we just seen more and more of each other.
Mr Daw: Did that include time spent alone and being intimate on occasion?
Giggs: It did, yes.
Mr Daw: At that time you were still both married. Did there come a time when Kate left her husband?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Do you have a recollection of approximately how long after that was, after you were first intimate in the hotel?
Giggs: Yeah I mean I wouldn’t say it was longer than six months it could have been four months or five months.
Mr Daw: Did she disclose in advance she was planning on leaving her husband?
Giggs: She did. She regularly said how unhappy she was and she moved out of the house her and her husband had shared.
Mr Daw: At that time you were still living in the family home with Stacey and the children?
Giggs: I was yes.
Mr Daw: How did things play out after she left her husband and you were still living at home with your wife and children – how did that play out between you and Kate?
Giggs: Erm we carried on as we had been, still working together having a relationship working together. Seeing each other when we could.
Mr Daw: Was there discussion about your intentions as far as your marriage was concerned?
Giggs: By this time the relationship had got more and more serious. We were falling in love with each other and yeah I’d spoken to Kate about me moving out of the house and us being together.
Mr Daw: And did you move out from your family home sort of immediately after Kate left her husband or sometime later?
Giggs: It would be a year after Kate left [for Abu Dhabi].
Mr Daw: Why did you not leave straight away?
Giggs: Me and my ex-wife had problems. I had cheated on my ex-wife. It was a public affair and we had got over that and things were good and it was a part of my life where I was just finishing football. I was going into a coaching career. It was longer hours, more time away from Stacey, more time away from the family. I wasn’t giving Stacey the attention she deserved. So gradually we were getting more and more unhappy and together with Kate it was, erm, it had become more and more difficult.
Mr Daw: Did you want to have your cake and eat it?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Did you somehow maintain family life with your children and also have the romantic relationship you had developed falling in love with someone else at the same time?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: What brought to an end your relationship with Stacey?
Giggs: It was a press article saying I was linked with Kate. Stacey questioned me about it. I denied it. But it wasn’t short after that that I left our family home and went to live somewhere else.
Mr Daw: Was that an easy thing for you to do or not?
Giggs: No it wasn’t, shortly after the article I didn’t leave. I denied it and I stayed in the family home. Kids were quite young then and it was hard to leave, to leave the kids.Then I moved to my mums.
Mr Daw: Nearby in Worsley?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Then where?
Giggs: Various places, stayed a few weeks at a hotel and also an apartment in Salford Quays with one of my friends.
Mr Daw: Was it an amicable situation with you and Stacey or challenging after you moved out?
Giggs: No. Challenging.
Mr Daw: And how was the situation with Kate after you moved out of the family home?
Giggs: Erm I think at that time, Kate was planning on moving away and had an opportunity to go to Abu Dhabi to go to work.
Mr Daw: Were you seeing each other in the sense of as a couple meeting up and seeing each other during that period?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Was it a period when it was intimate throughout that period?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: How long before she actually went to Abu Dhabi she brought the subject up – before or after you left the family home?
Giggs: There were times I had told Kate I had moved out and I actually had not and she got wind of that and we’d break up. So it sort of overlapped that time really when Kate finally decided she had a great chance to go work with a friend in Abu Dhabi and start a new company.
Mr Daw: At some stage in 2016?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: What was your attitude in the three or four months before she went? For her decision to go to Abu Dhabi?
Giggs: Erm I didn’t want her to go.
Mr Daw: Did you have conversations about it?
Giggs: Yes I didn’t want her to go. She had left her husband. I was in the midst of leaving my wife and we planned on being together and then she had this opportunity to go to Abu Dhabi.
Mr Daw: For your own emotional reasons you were not keen on her going. Did you do anything to stop her going or try to dissuade her from going?
Giggs: Other than telling her. I said to her I don’t want you to go.
Mr Daw: Did you tell her why you didn’t want her to go?
Giggs: Because I wanted to be with her.
Mr Daw: How did you feel towards her at that point?
Giggs: I loved her.
Mr Daw: Did she nevertheless decide firmly during that period she was going to go and take up this opportunity?
Giggs: Yeah I mean it was a great opportunity for Kate. She was getting frustrated at her job at Tangerine and it was the start of a new job in Abu Dhabi. Her best friend Katie Harvey had the company in Dubai and she wanted to start a company in Abu Dhabi which Kate would open and launch the new company in Abu Dhabi.
Mr Daw: Once she made the decision to go, what did you do, if anything, about it? How would you describe your attitude to her decision after that was clear it was what she was going to do?
Giggs: At this time I was leaving Manchester United as assistant manager as I had been doing for two years. I had the chance to travel for work and we decided we would make it work with regards to me visiting Kate in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Kate would come home whenever she got holidays or we would go somewhere else on holiday and meet up.
Mr Daw: She did move to Abu Dhabi in October 2016 – what happened between two of you after she went? Can you assist how many times, roughly, did you see each other face to face during that 15 month period?
Giggs: Quite a lot. I had the chance to travel. I had a couple of opportunities to play a game called futsal in India and I would on the way to India stop off in Dubai and see Kate. I also had a contract with an academy in Vietnam so it would be the same. Kate would come home whether it be Christmas or birthdays and also I would just go on holiday and meet her in Dubai.
Mr Daw: Approximately how many times over that 15 month period would you have seen her?
Giggs: I would say between 10 and 15.
Mr Daw: Kate has described an incident at the Westin Hotel in September 2017. Did you travel to Dubai in September 2017?
Giggs: It was one of the occasions I had a futsal tournament in India. The final just so happened to be in Dubai so I played the early rounds in India then we came back to Dubai and played the semi final and finals in Dubai. It’s just five-a-side but a smaller ball a heavier ball it’s more sort of skills and exhibition games.
Mr Daw: What went on between you and Kate?
Giggs: Obviously we were delighted as it was a chance again to see Kate. We sort of synched diaries in respect of when my games were being played and Kate could organise meetings so we could socialise together. Sometimes a meeting would be in Abu Dhabi and we had to arrange an hour drive. But on the days I was there she would stay with me.
Mr Daw: Was there an evening during that trip when you had an argument?
Giggs: There was.
Mr Daw: Had there been periods of ups and downs?
Giggs: Yes there had.
Mr Daw: Did you have arguments?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Did the two of you have issues around speed of response if you were to message each other?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: And was that more from one of you than the other or was it mutual?
Giggs: I would say it was mutual.
Mr Daw: Why was that, how did that develop the two of you being very insistent to quick responses to messages?
Giggs: I think early on it was sort of as a joke, it was just something that we did then if one of us had been irritated by the other we probably took it a little bit different and it became a pattern of ‘You must be busy’ or ‘You got no time to speak to me’. It was a pattern pretty early on in our relationship.
Mr Daw: To be clear can you assist as to who started that as a pattern or not?
Giggs: No. We had finished the futsal tournament that evening and everyone went to a club – a private event. My agent, someone else from the agency and also Katie Harvey, myself and Kate were at the club.
Mr Daw: Had alcohol been consumed?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: What happened?
Giggs: Well we are having a good time in the club, lots of dancing and just socialising with each other.
Mr Daw: How was it between you and Kate?
Giggs: It was good yeah, like I said it was the ideal scenario really. I was able to see her while I was working at the same place as where Kate lived. So we were getting on really well.
Mr Daw: How did things take a turn for the worse?
Giggs: During the night I received a message off my daughter and I was replying to my daughter in the club.
Mr Daw: You received a message from your daughter who may have been 14 or 15 at the time and what happened after that?
Giggs: There was just a couple of messages that went back and forwards between me and my daughter and I could just feel Kate sort of looking over and wondering who I was messaging.
Mr Daw: And so what happened?
Giggs: I just got a bit irritated. Because she was making it quite obvious she was peering over my shoulder and I just said I’m messaging Libby and she made some reference of love hearts and it felt like she just didn’t believe it was Libby who I was messaging.
Mr Daw: So what happened?
Giggs: I stormed off.
Mr Daw: Where did you go?
Giggs: Back to the room.
Mr Daw: Was the room in the same place. Was the hotel in the club?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: So you went to the room in the complex. What happened after that?
Giggs: Shortly after Kate followed me back.
Mr Daw: What happened between the two of you?
Giggs: She came back into the room and the two of us started arguing. I said you are accusing me of messaging someone when it’s my daughter. She didn’t like that and we just got into an argument about it.
Mr Daw: Any physical element of the argument?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: What happened? How did it come to an end?
Giggs: I said I didn’t want her to stay at the hotel. I said ‘Find somewhere else to stay, you are not staying with me tonight’ and I started packing her suitcase.
Mr Daw: As far as you were aware she was living in this part of the world. Were you aware if she had anywhere else to stay?
Giggs: She had plenty of friends in Dubai to go to. Kate was trying to stop me putting clothes and various other stuff in the suitcase.
Mr Daw: How was she doing that?
Giggs: Just trying to stop me, I was bent over putting things in the suitcase and she was trying to stop me.
Mr Daw: Did she succeed in stopping you filling the case or packing the case?
Giggs: I didn’t manage to shut it but I was ushering it towards the front door and trying to open the front door with the suitcase, not closed, but with most of her clothes in.
Mr Daw: Did you take it outside the room?
Giggs: It was about half inside half in the room.
Mr Daw: Had you done anything physically towards Kate or touch her deliberately in any way during this sequence?
Giggs: No. We were just arguing. Kate managed to get the suitcase back in the room. I still maintained I didn’t want her to sleep with me. It was a suite so there was a bed and settee and couch in the living room area. I said ‘You’re not sleeping with me, you can sleep on the settee’.
Mr Daw: The suggestion is you have physically thrown her out in the corridor without any clothes on. Did that happen?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: Did she sleep the whole night on the settee?
Giggs: No after we both calmed down we ended up spending the night together in the same bed. We had sex that night.
Mr Daw: Of any particular kind?
Giggs: Erm. Well we had sex that we would have quite often which could get rough but not anything weird but just rough sex.
Mr Daw: Was that sort of sexual activity something you engaged in regularly?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Who if either of you was the prime instigator?
Giggs: It was both of us especially after not seeing each other for a long time. We would message each other what we are going to do.
Mr Daw: Were you aware she had any injuries as a result of that activity?
Giggs: I wasn’t no.
Mr Daw: What happened the next day?
Giggs: I think I got up for breakfast, met my agent and the next day Kate joined us.
Mr Daw: Any issue between the two of you the next day?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: So you have gone from you having a happy time in the night club, arguing about messaging your daughter, arguing in room and a tussle over suitcase and then you have had sex and the next day everything is OK between you. Was that unusual of the ups and downs even over a 24 hour period?
Giggs: It wasn’t unusual but it wasn’t regular.
Mr Daw: Did you discuss her next career move to Abu Dhabi before she returned to the UK?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: What was the general position in those discussions?
Giggs: Kate wasn’t really enjoying the work in Abu Dhabi. She felt a little bit lonely and she wanted to come back to the UK.
Mr Daw: And what was your view of that? Were you for it or against it?
Giggs: I supported having sort of a long relationship where we didn’t see each other for a long time. I welcomed her back.
Mr Daw: Had there been other women in your life in any way shape or form during that time?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Had you been open with Kate about that?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: What did she do when she returned in terms of her work?
Giggs: She was then going to work for mine and Gary Neville’s company GG Hospitality who worked after Cafe Football Hotel Football and we were just about to launch Stock Exchange Hotel?
Mr Daw: What was her job going to be?
Giggs: She would be in charge of all PR regarding the hospitality company.
Mr Daw: What was her day to day responsibility?
Giggs: Stirring up interest in media regarding different businesses and organising interviews with myself and Gary and everyone who was involved in businesses. Getting social media or written press to promote the companies.
Mr Daw: How much experience did she have?
Giggs: Quite a number of years.
Mr Daw: What was your view, you had seen her in action for some time. What was the calibre of her work?
Giggs: I thought she was amazing at her job.
Mr Daw: Was that a view shared in the business with others?
Giggs: Yeah me and Gary had worked with her before she went to Abu Dhabi and it was one of the reasons we knew what she was capable of and it felt right that she would come back and work with us again.
Mr Daw: What was the process, did she make an approach to someone?
Giggs: No obviously me and Kate were going out with each other and knew about various businesses and where we wanted to take business and she wasn’t happy in Abu Dhabi. So I had a discussion with Gary about her coming back and working for the company.
Even though she was technically her own boss in Abu Dhabi, she still worked under Katie and Elsa. She wanted to be her own boss so she was excited for the challenge.
Mr Daw: Was there anyone more senior to her in PR in the business?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: What was the salary package?
Giggs: Around £100,000 a year.
Mr Daw: There’s a suggestion you were less engaged with her or she said you gave her the cold shoulder in terms of your attitude when she came to the UK in January. What’s your perspective on that?
Giggs: I don’t believe it to be true.
Mr Daw: What was going on with your life at that time in January 2018?
Giggs: I had an interview for the manager of Wales job and had an interview in January which I then got. So after being assistant manager at Manchester United and I had a couple of years off regarding work and travelling and doing different things, I ultimately wanted to get back to football and it was for me in my opinion, the dream job.
Mr Daw: You played for Wales many times as a player?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: So that’s what was going on with you. You got the job you were appointed in January. Any connection with Kate’s return and the time period or just happened to be then?
Giggs: It just happened. Coincidence.
Mr Daw: Did you have to travel around then in relation to your new job?
Giggs: Yeah it was my dream job so like anything I did I wanted to do it properly and to the best of my ability whether it be watching players play or staff meetings they were quite regular.
Mr Daw: Was it different to the previous two years?
Giggs: Yes. It was obviously demands on my time but also pressure. It was a huge job. I put pressure on myself. I wanted to be the best manager that I could be so like I said, I watched as many players as I could, who I would be picking for the next squad, calling and meeting staff and players making sure when that game came I was ready.
Mr Daw: What contact did you have with her in your capacity as one of co owners and shareholders in the business?
Giggs: Exactly the same as when we first worked together just interviews and trying to promote the businesses but primarily Stock Exchange as that was a new hotel and restaurant.
Mr Daw: To the best of your knowledge – did Kate make a good start?
Giggs: She did.
Mr Daw: Did she impress Gary and those who she needed to impress?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Is there any element you were interfering with her work or trying to hinder her day to day working activities or anything to do with her career?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: Having returned to the Middle East, you were straight back to the Middle East in February for a holiday to Dubai. Who went on that trip in February 2018?
Giggs: Me and Kate.
Mr Daw: What was the purpose of the trip?
Giggs: A short break.
Mr Daw: The jury heard evidence of an argument at a restaurant – LPM or La Petite Maison. Where were the two of you staying?
Giggs: We were staying at the Residence Hotel.
Mr Daw: What were the arrangements of the evening?
Giggs: It was a restaurant Kate had always wanted to go to. So usually if we went on holiday to Dubai I let Kate choose or Kate would choose the restaurants because she lived there and knew them better than me having worked and promoted a lot of them. This was a restaurant she really wanted to go to.
Mr Daw: What happened?
Giggs: We sat down having ordered the starters and I received a message off my daughter. My daughter hurt her knee playing netball and she was just telling me all about it and I was trying to organise some physio for her through my contacts in football.
Mr Daw: Was anything said between the two of you about that activity on your phone?
Giggs: Yeah there was a lot of messages going back and forth so I could see Kate was getting agitated.
Mr Daw: Did she say why she was getting agitated?
Giggs: Just because I was on my phone.
Mr Daw: And what was your reaction when she became agitated about that?
Giggs: I just let Kate know I was messaging Libby and explain the situation and sort some physio out for Libby.
Mr Daw: Did that appease her?
Giggs: No because I carried on messaging because I hadn’t sorted it out, trying to get hold of physio trying to get hold of a doctor so Libby could get some treatment.
Mr Daw: Did that cause her to sort of calm down or did that cause her to say ‘Ryan ok I understand?’ What was her reaction?
Giggs: She still wasn’t happy.
Mr Daw: Did she tell you what she wasn’t happy about?
Giggs: She just said she was embarrassed I hadn’t looked up at her and I just had my face in my phone looking at my phone.
Mr Daw: Did it calm down or did the disagreement escalate?
Giggs: No I got upset. I thought she was being unreasonable and I got out of my chair and left.
Mr Daw: Why did you leave?
Giggs: Because I just thought Kate was being unreasonable I was trying to explain trying to sort some treatment out for my daughter and she was more worried about people looking at us and me just looking at my phone.
Ryan Giggs arrives at court in Manchester
Mr Daw: What happened after that?
Giggs: I got a taxi back to the hotel.
Mr Daw: Did the two of you reconnect at some point later in the day?
Giggs: Yes. We just made up.
Mr Daw: Was there any more to it than that?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: These are emails – ‘Mahiki tonight?’ and ‘I’m going to buy a travel Scrabble for Paris.’ Then you to Kate ‘Oi’ then you to Kate ‘Rude’ then just after midnight to Kate ‘Wow’. Then we see the following morning from her ‘Sorry’. Then Kate to you ‘Why did you block me?’ You say ‘I messaged you and seen you’re online and you didn’t reply’. Then Kate says ‘How is that enough of a reason to block me what’s going on Ryan?’ You say ‘What’ then ‘Jesus I just told you why it’s not good enough’, she says ‘I don’t understand you’ and it goes backwards and forwards. Were there times when the two of you fell out over messaging or being online or not being online or so on when you blocked each other for messaging on Whatsapp or on your iPhone or whatever. Was it just you that did that or was it Kate?
Giggs: Both of us.
Mr Daw: To some that may seem a fairly immature behaviour pattern. Do you agree?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: Why did you engage in that kind of behaviour?
Giggs: I think it was just something that happened early on in our relationship and it just carried on.
Mr Daw: Looking back on it, was it healthy?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: Looking back on it with perspective and time to think – why were you doing this? Asking why did you do this kind of thing?
Giggs: Like I say it was just some sort of cycle we had developed early on in our relationship and sometimes it would be jokey, sometimes not jokey, it would be serious. And yeah like you say it was immature.
Mr Daw: Were you using this as some form of control mechanism with Kate?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: What was the state of play over the first few months of 2019?
Giggs: We were going through a difficult patch but I believe we still wanted to be together.
Mr Daw: And again the picture that’s been painted by Kate and the prosecution case is that you were, that she was trying to get away from you and you were relentlessly pursuing her against her wishes. What do you say about that? What did you do?
Giggs: Sometimes after breakups I would try and woo her back. Send her flowers sometimes, message her.
Mr Daw: Was there periods where she was blocking you and you were emailing her or messaging her?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: What was your understanding of this rollercoaster type relationship what did you understand of what she expected of you in situations where you had fallen out and broken up?
Giggs: That I should fight for us.
Mr Daw: Where did you get that understanding from?
Giggs: When we had breaks and get back together she would say stuff like good job you fought for us and she would maybe go on to some more detail like I love the flowers or certain other things. I always got the impression that I had to fight for the relationship.
Mr Daw: Why did you continue to try and contact her [after she blocked you]?
Giggs: To rekindle the relationship.
Mr Daw: And as a result of what you describe, her telling you she wants you to fight for the relationship or her, what was your belief about whether she would or wouldn’t welcome your persistence?
Giggs: When we would get back together we would maybe laugh about how immature we would be. I always believed like I said that she wanted us to fight for us and she wanted me to try and woo her back.
Mr Daw: In this message Kate says ‘Ryan stop with this s*** please’ at 9.51am in the morning and ‘Oh and you’re not willing to fight. Ok then’. What did you understand her to be meaning in this sequence?
Giggs: What I have just explained, Kate expected when we fell out for me to fight for her.
Giggs: I would send her some pictures of myself.
Mr Daw: Had you done that before and she’d done the same back?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: And did you have intimate pictures of you together which you shared with each other?
Giggs: Yes.
Mr Daw: You send an email headed ‘Blackmail’ and you say ‘I will send this to the group if you don’t and a video file and we are now all aware of what that video was. What was your intent, what was your state of mind sending an email that said ‘Blackmail’ with the dancing video, what were you trying to do?
Giggs: Just a joke between me and Kate. Kate was dancing which was something out of nature just acting silly at a Christmas party. It was a work event when she lived in Abu Dhabi.
Mr Daw: Was there anything insidious or meant to be unpleasant or threatening – was there anything in that other than being a joke to break the ice?
Giggs: No it was a joke.
Mr Daw: Did you ever share any of your private videos or photographs of her with anyone ever?
Giggs: Never.
Mr Daw: And would you ever have done so?
Giggs: No.
Mr Daw: Would she have had any reason to believe that you would share such private stuff with other people?
Giggs: No she wouldn’t.
The trial continues
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