Ryan Giggs’ ex tells court: ‘I haven’t been headbutted in the face when I’ve not had filler’

Ryan Giggs’ ex-girlfriend today told a court she ‘has not been headbutted in the face when I’ve not had filler’ and so she ‘doesn’t know if they are more sensitive with or without it’.

The former Manchester United star, 48, is accused of ‘deliberately headbutting’ former partner Kate Greville, 36, during a row at his £1.7million mansion in Worsley in November 2020.

He is standing trial at Manchester Crown Court charged using controlling and coercive behaviour and the assault of Ms Greville and her sister Emma. He denies all charges.

The court today heard about a message Ms Greville sent to Giggs in which she said her lips were ‘f***ing killing’ after having filler in them. 

She said the cosmetic procedure did not cause bruising or swelling, but had caused her lips to become ‘more tender’.

Chris Daw QC, representing Giggs, asked if her lips were more sensitive at the time of the alleged assault due to the filler procedure.

She replied: ‘I’ve not been headbutted in the face when I’ve not had filler so I don’t know if they’re more sensitive with or without.’

Instead, she told the court that the ex-Wales manager had ‘looked me straight in the eyes and headbutted me in my lip’.

Mr Daw asked Ms Greville where he had allegedly headbutted her, and she indicated her upper lip, between her lip and nose.

She said she had no idea which part of his head he used ‘because I didn’t see, because it was right in my face’.

Mr Daw then said: ‘It wasn’t a headbutt, was it?’

He added: ‘It was two faces coming together in a very minor form of contact.’

But Ms Greville insisted it was a headbutt, adding: ‘That suggestion is completely false. What happened is he came at me with his arms on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and headbutted me in my lip.’

She was also asked about an article that appeared in The Sun on November 16, 2020, four days before she was interviewed by police about her domestic assault allegations.

The story featured a photograph of Ms Greville walking along a country lane with her dog, alongside the words ‘Living hell. Ryan Giggs’s ex spotted with a bruised lip in first outing since Wales manager’s assault arrest’.

Messages were read to the court between Ms Greville and a friend on November 10.

The friend wrote: ‘I’m selling the next pic of you and getting some paper out of this (laughing emojis).’

Ms Greville replied: ‘We can set up a pic and get money for both of us. What do you think?’ The friend said: ‘I think yes.’ Ms Greville wrote back: ‘We could get 5K.’

The friend added: “And kit our new apartment out.’ To which Ms Greville replied: ‘I think more to cover my legal costs (laugh emoji).’

The court heard that Ms Greville later sent a link of the article to her friend. She told her she looked ‘awful but me looking rough makes it look less staged’.

She wrote: ‘I think it’s good I look s**t to be honest.’

Mr Daw then asked Ms Greville if the photographs were staged and accused her of ‘deliberately trying to make it look like something had happened to you.

Ms Greville denied the allegation, adding: ‘I was trying to stop the paps turning up my doorstep every day. To take back control. Obviously I had an injury and I wanted to show them the reality but it was about stopping the photographers and press turning up at my family’s door twice/three times a day to get pics of me.’ 

It came as the trial also heard that Ms Greville ‘stopped contraception in a plot to get pregnant by him’ and admitted ‘lying about a cancer scare to get a coil removed’.

She denied claims by the footballer’s lawyers that she ‘planned to get pregnant’ as their relationship broke down, having messaged a friend saying: ‘I am not walking away with nothing’.

Her denial came under cross-examination by the former Wales midfielder’s lawyers in his domestic assault trial, who today shared messages between Ms Greville and a friend in which she said: ‘I am not walking away with nothing’.

The messages were sent after the PR executive began to ‘plan’ leave Giggs, having allegedly found evidence on the footballer’s iPad that he had conducted ‘full-on’ affairs with eight other women during their relationship.  

The court was told how in October 2020, having found the messages, Ms Greville messaged a friend saying: ‘I need a plan’. Referring to the message, Mr Daw asked Ms Greville: ‘What were you talking about?’

Ms Greville told the court: ‘I needed a plan to get away in secret so he couldn’t find me, so he wouldn’t harass me. And how to let him know how I had found all those things out.’

Mr Daw said: ‘And walking away (with nothing)?’ Ms Greville replied: ‘I am talking about my dog. One hundred per cent, just the dog.’ 

Mr Daw said: ‘Your plan was to get pregnant by Mr Giggs.’ Ms Greville said: ‘No, absolutely not.’ 

The court also heard how Ms Greville messaged her friend saying that she was getting her contraceptive coil removed that week. The court heard Ms Greville later did have the coil removed, having told Giggs she was going to hospital after a smear test showed ‘cancerous cells’.

Chris Daw said: ‘The truth is you were going to have your contraceptive out.’

Ms Greville told the court: ‘I was getting my coil out and I also wanted a STD test. I wanted him off my back. I completely regret saying these things but I needed to say something to get him off my back and for him to leave me alone.’

Mr Daw said: ‘The true position is there was no medical emergency for the coil to be taken out.’ Ms Greville replied: ‘There was no medical emergency but it (the coil) was coming to an end and it needed taking out.’

‘If I was saying I had cancerous cells then I would not have to have sex with him.’

Mr Daw, refering to text messages between the pair, said: ‘I am going to suggest you were having active, regular and very enthusiastic sex with Mr Giggs at this time including when you had this coil removed.’ Ms Greville said: ‘I disagree.’

It comes as the court heard claims from Ms Greville that Giggs had kicked her in the back ‘so hard’ that she ‘fell off the bed’ during a stay at the Stafford Hotel in London in December 2019.

Ms Greville had previously alleged that during the incident she was thrown out of their room by Giggs, who then ‘threw a laptop’ at her head

The PR executive also previously told Giggs’s trial at Manchester Crown Court how the defendant had thrown her naked into a corridor during a separate incident at a hotel Dubai in September 2017. 

Giggs is in on trial accused of controlling and coercive behaviour against Ms Greville between August 2017 and November 2020.

He is also charged with assaulting Ms Greville and her sister Emma. He denies all charges against him and is on trial at Manchester Crown Court.

Today, on day four of the trial, in which Ms Greville faced a second day of cross-examination from Giggs’ lawyers,  jurors heard: 

• Claims by Ms Greville that the ex-Manchester United star kicked Ms her in the back ‘so hard’ that she ‘fell off the bed’ and to the floor during a hotel in London in 2019;
• How Giggs and Ms Greville were ‘utterly addicted’ to messaging and expected each other to reply ‘in seconds’, according to the footballer’s lawyer Chris Daw QC;
• Claims by the PR executive that Giggs was ‘unsupportive’ of her career and would ‘undermine’ her and had ‘conditioned’ her to respond to messages quickly;
• How Ms Greville ‘went ballistic’ at Giggs after he accidentally called her by the name of his ex-wife while they were out with friends on holiday in Dubai;
• Mr Daw countered Ms Greville’s claims that Giggs had interfered in her friendship’s, telling the court she had enjoyed three holidays, to Ibiza, Portugal and Greece, with her friends in the months before their break-up;
• That pair moved in together at Giggs’s £1.7million Worsley mansion at the start of lockdown and made videos together including one where they posed in sunglasses and hooded tops while miming to 50 Cent on TikTok;

It comes as Ms Greville was quizzed by Giggs’s barrister about her decision to continue her relationship with the ex-footballer, despite her claims of physical and mental abuse.

Mr Daw also questioned her decision to move into the ex-Wales winger’s £1.7million mansion at the start of the first Covid lockdown in March 2020.

But a tearful Ms Greville said she was ‘ashamed’ of the decision to ‘keep going back’ to Giggs, telling jurors: ‘It was a cycle of abuse that he promised the world. He was very convincing, he could be very charming.

‘I went back again stupidly and I am ashamed of that, hugely ashamed of that, but I did.’

Mr Daw also took aim at Ms Greville’s suggestions that Giggs had interfered in her relationships with her friends in the lead up to the end of their relationship in November 2020 – when Giggs is accused of ‘headbutting’ her and assaulting her sister Emma.

He said in the months before their break-up, Ms Greville had enjoyed three holidays, to Ibiza, Portugal and Greece – the latter two of which she had flown out with her friends.

But Ms Greville replied: ‘He was creating really difficult relationships with these people. There’s many more months and weeks that I have a relationship with my friends that can be difficult. That’s just a holiday, or a long weekend.’ 

She also accused of the former Manchester United star of ‘flirting’ with her friend in ‘front of her face’ and then asking: ‘Does that make you jealous?’. 

Mr Daw also addressed claims made by Ms Greville earlier in the trial that she had found evidence on an iPad that the former footballer had engaged in ‘full on’ relationships with eight other women while with the PR executive.

He suggested that Ms Greville’s decision to leave the former footballer was ‘nothing to do with coercion, violence or anything like that – it was just to do with his cheating.’ Ms Greville said it was also about his ‘coercion and control and manipulating.’ 

This morning, the court also heard how the pair were ‘utterly addicted’ to messaging and expected each other to reply ‘in seconds’, jury members in the footballer’s domestic assault trial have today been told. 

Under cross-examination by Giggs’s lawyer, Ms Greville, 36, was today asked about her complaining to the former Manchester United star regarding his response time to her messages.

The PR executive had previously claimed the ex-footballer was ‘unsupportive’ of her career and would ‘undermine’ her, including when she was looking to leave her then employer, GG Hospitality, run by Giggs and former team-mate Gary Neville, and set up her own business.

She also claimed Giggs, who she earlier in the trial claimed was having ‘full-on’ affairs with eight other women during their relationship, had ‘conditioned’ her to reply instantly to text messages and had made her feel ‘insecure’.

But Giggs’ lawyer, Chris Daw QC, today challenged her claims. He read out a message sent by Ms Greville to Ms Giggs, in which she said: ‘My own f****** boyfriend can’t reply to a message,’ to which Giggs replied: ‘WTF I was sorting the kids out.’

Asked about the message, Ms Greville replied: ‘He had conditioned me to behaving like that, I was like you expect me to reply within seconds so why don’t you reply within seconds. I used to do it back to him…’

Mr Daw replied: ‘That’s a form of programming he did on you?’ Ms Greville said: ‘He did it to me so I ended up doing it back to him.’

Mr Daw said: ‘You were both like that and utterly addicted to messaging backwards and forwards.’ She replied: ‘We messaged a lot yes.’

Mr Daw said: ‘You both expected instant replies or got upset.’ Ms Greville said: ‘He conditioned me to being like that.’

‘Ryan was attached to his phone so for him to not look at his phone for an hour was nor normal at all… If I had not replied to something for an hour I would have got a message like that.’

Mr Daw said: ‘That’s what I was saying previously, you were just as bad as each other.’

Ms Greville said: ‘I felt it was him making me like that, he was making me react and act like that. It wasn’t a natural reaction for me to act like that.’ She said Giggs made her feel ‘very insecure’. 

Today the court heard how Giggs was ‘entirely supportive’ of his former girlfriend setting up her own business despite her claiming that he often undermined her career.

Mr Daw told the court about a message sent by Ms Greville in July 2019 saying; ‘I need to talk about setting up my business. Not now but when we are together. I need some help with accounts … need your help and advice.’

Giggs replied: ‘I will sort everything baby xx.’ Mr Daw told her: ‘You were actively pursuing different career options… and he was entirely supportive.’ She agreed and said: ‘We were in a relationship and that’s what people in relationships tend to do.’

But she later added that he would undermine her. She said: ‘When I originally said I was going to leave GG he didn’t want me to leave at all. That was a conversation. He told me in the office he didn’t want me to leave.’

‘He was like two different people. He’d say all these words but his actions didn’t match his words.

‘He would pepper the niceness with horribleness, and the other way around as well.’

Giggs’ barrister Chris Daw QC today referred to an alleged incident at the Stafford Hotel in London, in December 2019.

Mr Daw said Giggs’ version of events on the night of the Stafford Hotel incident was that the pair had been at a work function and Ms Greville accused Giggs of flirting with a woman he had been paired with for a crazy golf competition.

Ms Greville said she had accused him of flirting but denied that she tried to ‘wind him up’ by flirting with another man at a club later on.

Mr Daw said that the next morning ‘you said to him: ‘I was so drunk I don’t remember much about that night”.

Ms Greville told the court: ‘While we were at breakfast I went to touch my head and my head was hurting. I said: ‘Did you throw a bag at me last night?’ and he said: ‘Yes, but you wound me up that much you made me do it’.’

Mr Daw said: ‘That’s all just lies, isn’t it?’ Ms Greville replied: ‘No, absolutely not.’

Referring to Ms Greville’s witness statement about the incident itself, he said: ‘You said ‘Giggs threw a bag at my head with a laptop in it which caused my head to swell and bruise, kicked me out of bed and threw me out of the hotel room naked again’.

‘You said the first time he was abusive to me was in a Dubai hotel room three years ago. ‘He dragged me by my arms and threw me out of the hotel room naked and then you say the second was at a hotel room in London’.

‘In your interview, you said he kicked you off the bed so hard you landed on the floor.

The barrister said: ‘Is that your evidence? He kicked you so hard you fell off the bed or in your interview were you trying to make everything sound as bad as it could?’

Ms Greville replied: ‘No it was 100 per cent what happened.’

The barrister referred to messages between Giggs and Ms Greville at the time of the trip to London, describing them as ‘good natured’ and ‘good humoured’ the day after the alleged incident on December 6.

On the following day, Ms Greville sent a message to Giggs while on a train to a wedding in Shrewsbury, saying ‘OMG dying’ because she had a hangover.

Giggs replied to her saying: ‘Ropey’.

The barrister pointed out that there was nothing to suggest that she had been violently assaulted the day before.

Ms Greville said: ‘No, because he made me feel like it was my fault.’

The court heard Giggs travelled from London to Manchester and he picked Ms Greville up from Shrewsbury the next day

She messaged him to say: ‘Thank you for coming to get me, it’s very lovely of you.’ She said: ‘I needed to be at a work thing with him in Manchester and there were no trains from Shrewsbury.’

Asked why Giggs came to collect her when he could have got a taxi, she said: ‘He felt guilty about what he had done the night before.’

The barrister said: ‘This was the day after you claim he violently assaulted you and reading these messages we don’t even get a hint of that.’

Ms Greville said: ‘He made me feel like it was his fault, he made me feel insecure and made me feel I couldn’t have a problem with what happened because it was my fault.’

Jurors also heard that Ms Greville had described living with the defendant during the first Covid-19 lockdown from March 2020 as ‘utter hell’.

The pair moved in together for the first time after Giggs asked her to live with him at his property in Worsley, Greater Manchester, she said.

Mr Daw asked: ‘Could you have gone to your parents or someone else? Ms Greville replied: ‘Yes.’

Mr Daw said: ‘Was one of the reasons you didn’t because actually you wanted to spend time with Ryan in his rather larger house?’

The witness said: ‘I wanted to stay with Ryan, not because of his house but because we had just started the relationship again.’

Mr Daw replied: ‘Can I suggest that you would not have done that if he had been a serial and violent abuser?’

Ms Greville said: ‘It was a cycle of abuse that made me feel insecure. I kept going back, he kept promising the world.

‘He made me believe that he would not do it again and, stupidly, I went back. I am hugely ashamed of that but I did.’

Mr Daw played two videos to the jury of seven women and five men which showed the couple in lockdown – one in which they exercised together in the garden and the other rapping along to 50 Cent’s In Da Club.

Mr Daw put it to Ms Greville that lockdown was obviously hard but the pair were doing normal things ‘much of the time’ and having fun.

Ms Greville said: ‘It was not all fun. It doesn’t mean he was being nice to me all the time. At the start of lockdown it was fine but it got progressively worse.’

During lockdown the couple also took part in online family quizzes, wine tasting on Zoom and had Michelin-starred chefs bring in food, the court heard.

But Ms Greville said there were arguments, including one involving loading the dishwasher.

She told the court: ‘He was making me feel like I was stupid, the way I was loading it. I had to do it exactly the way he wanted to do it. That’s just one example of many.’

Mr Daw said: ‘You suggest in your various accounts that lockdown was a period of living hell.’

Ms Greville replied: ‘I felt like I was losing my mind. I was having panic attacks. It was a horrific time for me.’

The court also today heard how Ms Greville branded Giggs ‘disgusting’ as she told him ‘I actually hate you’ and ‘I will find someone a million times better’ in a rant-filled message after she found out about him cheating on her.

Ms Greville went through his phone after he returned home drunk and found he had been messaging other women.

Giggs had come home, vomited in the sink and then passed out in bed, she recounted earlier in her evidence.

She told the court that she also checked his iPad and says she found more evidence of him cheating on her.

Ms Greville admitted it was ‘common’ for Giggs to get attention from women.

Ms Greville also denied she had lied ‘prolifically’ to the police in her various accounts.

Mr Daw said to the witness: ‘Throughout your evidence, from start to finish, on the issue of controlling and coercive behaviour you have twisted the truth very carefully to try to implicate him in crimes he did not commit.’ Ms Greville replied: ‘I have told the truth.’ 

Yesterday, Mr Daw QC, asked why Ms Greville had not told her friend and business partner Elsa Roodt about an alleged assault in Dubai in 2017 when asked.

Ms Greville, sat behind a curtain shielded from Giggs and the public gallery, said: ‘I was embarrassed and I didn’t want to admit it.’

Mr Daw said: ‘It was a bruise caused by rough sex that the two of you enjoyed a lot.’  Ms Greville replied: ‘That bruise was not caused by rough sex.’

The court also heard how a few days after the alleged Dubai incident Ms Greville messaged a photograph of herself to Giggs.

The message read: ‘Tan is coming along nicely. My sex bruise is coming along nicely too!!’

Mr Daw added: ‘The truth of it is you did from time to time get bruises from sex.’ Ms Greville said: ‘Not that I recall.’

Confirming that she had not reported the alleged assault to police in Dubai, she said: ‘No, I didn’t admit to the assault because I was embarrassed but I told Elsa we had argued. 

‘I was later to work, visibly shaken and very upset which was evident that day. I tried to play down the bruising on my arm.’

Digging deeper into the pair’s sex life, Mr Daw also told the court that Giggs had purchased and shared images of sex toys, including a paddle and handcuffs from lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

Mr Daw said his client had bought the sex toys after Ms Greville had asked him to be ‘more assertive’ in the bedroom.

In a series of messages, read out in court by Mr Daw, Ms Greville messaged: ‘I want you, rough.’

Mr Giggs messaged: ‘Do you? I’m scared of hurting you. Ms Greville replied: ‘I want it to hurt, not in a weird way. I want you to surprise and shock me.’

Mr Giggs messaged: ‘It’s a fine line.’ Ms Greville replied: ‘Well we’ll just have to have fun finding that line then.’

The court heard Giggs then sent a picture of a paddle from Agent Provocateur. Ms Greville messaged: ‘What is that?’ Mr Giggs replied: ‘You asked me to be a bit more assertive.’

Ms Greville then sent: ‘When are we using this?’ prompting Mr Giggs to reply: ‘After I use these badboys,’ sharing a picture of handcuffs.

Ms Greville then replied: ‘They’re amazing… Oh my god this is brilliant.’

Questioning the witness, Mr Daw said: ‘You’re saying you didn’t receive any kind of bruise from sex. Ms Greville said: ‘I said not that I recall. We never used that paddle, not once.

Mr Daw said: ‘The sex bruise was a joke, not a rouse. It was something you were taking pleasure in.’ Ms Greville said: ‘I was joking about it being a sex bruise, I was making light of telling Elsa it was a sex bruise which was wrong.’

It comes as jurors yesterday heard evidence from Ms Greville, who said Giggs had told her that she ‘did not deserve to be a parent’ during a blazing row between the pair.

She also told the court how the ex-Manchester united star ‘deliberately headbutted’ her during a row at his £1.7million mansion in Worsley in November 2020.

Ms Greville yesterday broke down in tears as she said of the former Wales manager: ‘He came at me from nowhere and headbutted me in my face. 

‘I fell backwards, my lip instantly swelled. I put my hands over my mouth and I could taste the blood.’

It comes as the court yesterday heard more about the ‘Blackmail’ e-mail message sent by Giggs to Ms Greville. 

Jurors had previously heard how Ms Greville had received the message with a video clip, which she initially believed was a sex tape and that she feared the footballer would forward to her work WhatsApp group.

However the court heard the video attachment, which she did not open, was a clip of Ms Greville and another woman at a Christmas party dancing to Wham! hit ‘Last Christmas’.

The video shows the women dressed in black with Santa hats on dancing to a Christmas song, followed by two men beat boxing. 

Referring to the fact that Ms Greville said she deleted the attachment without viewing it, the barrister said: ‘You said it was ‘One of our videos we had done’, you meant a sexual video.’

Ms Greville said: ‘That’s what I thought it was but I didn’t view it.’

The barrister said: ‘You made a number of private videos and they were obviously not to be shared with other people and were not shared with other people. 

‘You said he was going to send the video to the group. Was he blackmailing you by sending a sexual video to the WhatsApp group?

The barrister told her: ‘You knew full well it wasn’t a sexual video, because you looked at it.’ Ms Greville said: ‘I don’t recall watching it.’

Ms Greville said she later handed her laptop over to police for them to look for it.

It comes as Ms Greville yesterday batted off suggestions from the footballer’s legal team that was a ‘gold digger’, after it was revealed she told a friend she was ‘not going to walk away’ from their ‘violent’ relationship ‘with nothing’.

She yesterday told jurors in the domestic assault trial that she was initially attracted to Giggs ‘not because of his money and not because he was a footballer’ but because he was ‘very inspiring’.

In cross examination by the former Manchester United star’s lawyer, Mr Daw QC, Ms Greville was asked: ‘Did you tell your friend you weren’t going to walk away from Mr Giggs with nothing?’

Ms Greville confirmed: ‘Yes.’ However the PR executive said she was not after compensation from the former Wales midfielder. Asked if she was seeking damages from the 48-year-old, she said: ‘Absolutely not.’ 

Ms Greville, 36, also told the court how she and Giggs were both still married when the affair started, but, ‘if anything was put off by the fact that he was a footballer.’

The barrister asked her: ‘Did Ryan’s public profile and wealth have anything to do with your interest in him?

Ms Greville said: ‘He was very inspiring, I looked up to him in terms of a business sense, who had worked hard…’ 

‘He was more attractive because he was successful and had done well for himself, not because of his money and not because he was a footballer, if anything that put me off, him being a footballer.’

She admitted to having sex with the former Manchester United star two months before leaving her husband, who she alleged in court was ‘controlling’.

Ms Greville claimed initially her and Giggs’ relationship had been ‘amazing’, but had then deteriorated before becoming ‘relentlessly awful’ while they lived together during the Covid pandemic.

She said Giggs preyed on her ‘vulnerability’ and damaged relations with her friends and family and that she became ‘a slave to his every need and every demand’.

Ms Greville told the court Giggs would sometimes show her affection but was ‘aggressive’ a lot of the time and would sometimes use violence against her.

‘He damaged relationships with my friends and isolated me from certain people. He had a negative impact on relations with my family. ‘ 

Asked about her claims of violence against her, Ms Greville, who yesterday told the court she is now the mother of 12-week baby with her new partner, said: ‘It wasn’t consistent violence, he wasn’t regularly violent but there were times in our relationship when he was violent.’

She was also asked if she had looked up the term coercive control during the pair’s relationship and said: ‘I’m really into psychology when Ryan was making me feel like I was going crazy, paranoid, I googled how I was feeling. The thing that came up was ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ and what I was experiencing was exactly the same as that. ‘

Yesterday, faced cross-examination by Giggs’ lawyer, Chris Daw QC. He began by asking Ms Greville about the pair’s relationship. She responded: ‘He damaged relationships with my friends and isolated me from certain people. He had a negative impact on relations with my family. ‘

Asked about the violent incidents, she said: ‘It wasn’t consistent violence, he wasn’t regularly violent but there were times in our relationship when he was violent.’

Mr Daw QC asked if she was seeking ‘a large sum of compensation’ and she replied: ‘Absolutely not ‘

She was asked if she had looked up the term coercive control and said: ‘I’m really into psychology when Ryan was making me feel like I was going crazy, paranoid, I googled how I was feeling. 

‘The thing that came up was ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ and what I was experiencing was exactly the same as that.’ 

The court also heard how Ms Greville seduced Giggs with a provocative photo of herself before their relationship began.

Ms Greville and Giggs were described as ‘prolific messagers’ by his QC who said there were 160 pages of messages between the former couple in the case which were a ‘tiny fraction’ of the messages actually sent. Ms Greville agreed.

Referring to messages sent between the pair in the summer of 2017, the QC brought up a message of photo of Ms Greville sent Giggs of her wearing a crop top and underwear.

Giggs messaged: ‘Amazing pout too!!X’. Ms Greville messaged: ‘Takes me back to your first abs picture, and I was like wow I’m in love.’ She then messaged: ‘It was so f***** naughty of me to send that picture.’

Giggs messaged: ‘I know, but you knew what you was doing.’ Ms Greville messaged: ‘I knew exactly what I was doing.’ The barrister asked Ms Greville if she knew what she was doing.

The witness responded: ‘I knew as soon as I got that signed shirt what would happen, this would be the start of a relationship. I did not get the signed shirt for a month.’

Mr Daw referred to the picture as ‘provocative’. Ms Greville, who had earlier suggested Giggs had taken advantage of her ‘vulnerability’ to get her into a relationship, said: ‘I knew showing a picture of me with my abs in my gym kit he would like it

She added: ‘I absolutely played a part in it, I never said I didn’t. 

‘He definitely pushed it and he made me aware he was interested. I was in an awful relationship with my husband which was awful. He [Mr Giggs] showed me attention and it was flattering. It felt like escapism, of course I knew what I was doing.’

She said she thought Giggs was her ‘knight in shining armour’ and was her ‘soulmate’ at the time.

However Ms Greville also told the court how the pair’s relationship soured. She said violence by Giggs was ‘not regular’ and he would use aggression more as a form of control.

Mr Daw asked: ‘Do you say he undermined your confidence, your self-esteem and was disparaging to you generally in those ways?’

She said: ‘Yes, on the whole he was, but on the other side it was like two extremes. Other times he would give me confidence.

‘He was not constantly awful, not constantly horrible. It was hot and cold. Two different people. The result of his behaviour … undermined my self-confidence.’

She said he had also undermined and damaged her business.

The court heard Ms Greville gave a statement the day before the start of the trial in which she said she had felt like ‘a slave’ to the defendant.

She said: ‘That is what it felt like. When Ryan said do something, I would do it.

‘There was resistance sometimes but he made me feel like I had to do what he said, otherwise there would be consequences.’

However Giggs’ barrister said that the footballer’s messages to Ms Greville over the course of their troubled relationship weren’t always nasty.

Ms Greville conceded that for the first four-and-a-half years their relationship was romantic, but that his behaviour towards her changed in around 2018 when she returned to Manchester from Dubai where she had been working.

He said: ‘Mr Giggs used appalling language, insulting and nasty words towards you. But that wasn’t typical of your relationship.

Ms Greville said: ‘Not at the beginning but over time it got worse.’ Mr Daw said: ‘There were only a handful of conversations when it got that bad.’

Ms Greville said: ‘Yes but only on messages, you weren’t privy to telephone conversations.’ Mr Daw said: ‘Do you agree the majority of the time he was kind and loving towards you?’

Ms Greville said: ‘At the beginning yes. For four-and-a-half years he was nice, for one-and-a-half years he wasn’t. By the end of the relationship it was relentlessly awful. 

‘The time it really ramped up and it was awful was during Covid when we were living together. When I returned back to Manchester (January 2018) that’s when he turned and there was a significant change in his behaviour.’

The barrister suggested the vast majority of the messages were not like those described.

Ms Greville said: ‘Yes they were, he hadn’t written it down before. He was, he just did it verbally. He sent it in emails because he couldn’t do it verbally and I was standing up for myself.’

Ms Greville’s claims that Giggs used to give her the ‘silent treatment’ were addressed by the star’s barrister.

Ms Greville said: ‘He was speaking to me but it wasn’t the same. He was off with me and not replying to messages. You see he makes excuses as to why he’s not replying and I’m saying ‘Do you still want this?’ because he was acting very differently.’

She was asked about messages she sent to Giggs in which she told him she ‘loved him’ and ‘missed him’.

Ms Greville said: ‘Ryan had this way of turning things on me and it was my fault so I felt I had to be overly loving to him because he would make me insecure and worried about the relationship so I would overcompensate to make things ok.’

Giggs’ barrister said the real problem in their relationship was that the former footballer couldn’t remain faithful.

Ms Greville replied: ‘It was part of the problem, it created issues but it wasn’t the whole problem. There was way more to it than that.’

The barrister said Ms Greville was asking the jury to ignore the messages because there were telephone conversations that could not be produced in evidence.

Ms Greville broke down in tears when the barrister said to her: ‘What you’re saying now is a complete pack of lies.’

The PR executive was also asked about the incident in Dubai, where she claimed she was locked out of a hotel room naked.

He said the argument began when Ms Greville accused Giggs of messaging another woman, but he told her he was messaging his daughter.

The barrister said Ms Greville lived in Dubai at the time and had friends locally. ‘When you got back to the room Ryan asked you to leave,’ said the barrister.

Ms Greville said: ‘No we got into bed, I said something he didn’t like and he flipped.’

‘He asked you to go,’ said the barrister. Ms Greville said: ‘After he dragged my arm naked out of the door.’

But the barrister said: ‘I’m going to suggest that didn’t happen. He told you he didn’t want to be with you that night.’

Ms Greville said: ‘Yes.’ Mr Giggs’ lawyer said: ‘What I suggest is what Ryan did was put your things in suitcase in the corridor and asked you to go.’

Ms Greville said: ‘No he threw the suitcase, it was opened and all my clothes… I was completely naked and didn’t want to stand outside the room.’

The QC said this was not true and ‘manufactured’. He added: ‘I suggest there was no deliberate assault on you at all.’

Ms Greville said: ‘He did, he grabbed my wrist and caused bruising.’

Refuting the barrister’s suggestion that Giggs tried to take her hand off his wrist, she went on: ‘He dragged me out of bed, across the room, in the lounge/suite and threw my things in the corridor.’

Confirming that she had not reported the alleged assault to police in Dubai, she said: ‘No, I didn’t admit to the assault because I was embarrassed but I told Elsa we had argued. I was later to work, visibly shaken and very upset which was evident that day. I tried to play down the bruising on my arm.’

Yesterday the court was played Ms Greville’s 105 minute interview with detectives in November 2020 following the row, in which Giggs is also accused of having assaulted Ms Greville’s sister, Emma.

The court also heard how Giggs had engaged in ‘full-on’ affairs with eight women during ‘toxic’ six-year on-off relationship with Ms Greville.

The PR executive, who said the pair’s early relationship was like ‘like a love story from the movies’, told jurors how she attempted to leave the former Manchester United and Wales star over his alleged flings and ‘controlling’ behaviour.

However Giggs would ‘bombard’ her with up to 50 messages an hour and threatened to ruin her career.

In one instance when she stopped answering him, he flew out to where she was living in Dubai and said to her ‘let’s start a family, you are the only person I want to be with’.

Ms Greville went on: ‘Then he went back home and I found out he was dating another girl. I was absolutely devastated.’

She claims he denied it, saying the woman had a boyfriend and urged her to move back to Manchester with him and have a baby.

The court heard how, in a separate incident, Giggs twice threw his then-girlfriend out of a hotel room while she was naked and on one occasion threw a laptop at her head.  

Ms Greville also claimed the former Wales winger ‘randomly’ sent a naked photo of himself to her, that she feared he could post ‘something of a really private nature’ on a work WhatsApp group and that he would call her by the name of his ex-wife, Stacey, as his ‘ultimate insult’.

She also told jurors Giggs would treat her ‘like his housemaid or his mum’, telling her she was stacking the dishwasher the wrong way, making the beds incorrectly, or complaining ‘if his tea was not ready on time’.

Yesterday, Ms Greville told Manchester Crown Court how Giggs ‘came at me from nowhere’ during a row over her finding evidence of eight alleged affairs ‘going back many years’ on his iPad. 

Ms Greville said her lip ‘instantly swelled’ during the incident at his home in Worsley, Greater Manchester, in November 2020, and that she believed she had also broken her elbow after he pinned her to the floor in their utility room as he tried to snatch her phone from her hand.

Ms Greville told the court that, during the incident, Giggs moved into the kitchen and refused to give her back her phone.

She said: ‘I said ”I’m glad the police are coming because you attacked me and I’ll tell them exactly what happened”. That’s when he came up to my face and headbutted me. He came at me from nowhere, grabbed me by the shoulders and headbutted me in the face. I said ”I can’t believe you’ve just done that”.

‘I was in shock and fell backwards, my lip instantly swelled so I put my hands over my mouth and I was really worried because I could taste the blood and thought he had split my lip open.

‘All the other times he had hurt me, this was different, he really wanted to hurt me, he looked me straight in the eyes and headbutted me.’

After police were called, she told the court how Giggs turned to her and said: ‘You need to think about this Kate, this could ruin me and it could ruin you.’

Ms Greville also told jurors how Giggs had ‘meant’ to harm her and that the alleged attack was different to all the other times she said he had hurt her.

Recalling the moment she said: ‘He said that the police had been called, that they were on their way and he was going to tell them that I attacked him and that I’m a psycho.

‘He was angry but there was cockiness to it. He was trying to bait me. We moved then to the kitchen. I reached out to try and get my phone.

‘I told him ‘I’m glad the police are coming because you attacked me and I’ll tell them exactly what happened’

‘And that was when he came forward to me and head butted me in the face. He came at me from nowhere, grabbed me by the shoulders and head butted my face.

‘He didn’t say sorry, he said nothing to me. I said: ‘I can’t believe you’ve just done that.’ I was in shock, I fell backwards, and I could feel my lip swell immediately. 

‘I put my hand over my mouth and could taste the blood. All the other times he hurt me, this was different, he meant to hurt me. He looked at me straight in the eyes and head butted me straight in the face.

‘He said ‘You need to think about this Kate, this could ruin me and it could ruin you.

‘He was saying ‘think about my job, my career, my kids’ and I said ‘you shouldn’t have done it then.’

Giggs was having ‘full-on’ affairs with eight other women during his ‘toxic’ six-year on-off relationship with Kate Greville, the court heard on Tuesday.

The PR executive, 36, made the discovery after accessing the football star’s iPad having ‘made it my mission to find out the truth’ about his other lovers, she told police.

She said how, during what she called a ‘cycle of abuse’, Giggs ‘dragged’ her out of the bedroom of a five-star hotel – leaving her naked in the corridor – after she accused him of ‘manically’ flirting with other women during a night out.

He then threw a bag containing her laptop at her head, giving her a ‘massive lump’, Manchester Crown Court heard.

When she attempted to leave him over his alleged flings and ‘controlling’ behaviour, Giggs would ‘bombard’ her with up to 50 messages an hour and threatened to ruin her career, she claimed.

Eventually she got into his iPad as she ‘needed to know the truth’ – and the ‘reality’ of his cheating was ‘way worse than I could imagine’, she said.

Giggs stood down in June as manager of the Wales national team following his arrest. 

The court heard that Ms Greville was employed by PR firm Tangerine for part of the alleged period of controlling behaviour and also by Giggs’ own company, GG Hospitality.

Giggs’ legal counsel, Chris Daw QC, said his client encouraged her career ambitions and went on to introduce most of her clients when she set up her business herself and earned a six-figure salary.

He said Ms Greville was ‘always completely financially independent’ and was free to travel and see her friends.

Giggs stood down in June as manager of the Wales national team following a period of leave since November 2020.

During his time at Old Trafford, Manchester United won 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, four FA Cups and three League Cups.

He won 64 caps for Wales and is co-owner of League Two side Salford City.

Giggs met Ms Greville in 2013 after she helped promote his Hotel Football venue, launched with ex-United teammate Gary Neville.

He divorced his wife Stacey in December 2017.  Giggs found love again with lingerie model, Zara Charles, 33, who has ‘supported’ him through the charges.