There’s a scene in the new series of Vinnie Jones In The Country where the footballer-turned-country squire has the brainwave (nicked from his pal Guy Ritchie) to build a mini-beach on his farm in Petworth, West Sussex. To get from his house to the beach he decides to cut a pathway through the dense undergrowth, and he has the bright idea to enlist goats to munch their way through the brush in order to create said trail.
His good friend Wobbly – aka Paul Worby, his trusted sidekick on the show, as well as the man usually called upon to put Vinnie’s ideas into practice – lets out an exasperated sigh. The only flaw in Vinnie’s otherwise genius plan to use the animals, he remarks, is that it will be practically impossible to ‘keep goats eating in a straight line from Point A to Point B’.
The same could probably be said of the Discovery+ series itself which, much like Vinnie’s goats, has forged its own unexpected path. What started in 2023 as a fun show with Vinnie and long-suffering Wobbly renovating the star’s 2,000-acre estate has now become something of a forum for men to freely discuss their mental health.
While fishing and chatting with chums such as former footballer Paul Gascoigne and, in this new third series, singer Rag’n’Bone Man, the chaps open up about issues such as sobriety, depression and grief. After an episode where Vinnie talked about how he kept going through difficult times, one viewer turned up at the farm. ‘He said, “You saved my life,”’ Vinnie says proudly. ‘And I’ve got to tell you, there’s a lot of guys doing that. There’s a lot of mental health issues in the countryside and I’ve got people ringing me constantly, saying, “Can I have a chat?”’
Does he actually let people come to his house to talk over a cuppa? ‘Course I do,’ he replies, baffled by my surprise. ‘It’s like watering a flower that’s wilted and bringing it back to life. That’s what I try to do for people now.’
Anyone versed in Vinnie Jones folklore would be more likely to envisage him biting the head off a flower than watering it – or as he more colourfully puts it, ‘I was portrayed as this f***ing lunatic that went round and headbutted everybody.’
As a hard-tackling midfielder for Wimbledon during the late 80s, he was part of the club’s ‘Crazy Gang’, a group of players known for their boozy, madcap antics. While they famously upset the odds by beating league champions Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup Final, the defining photo of his career was from the same year, showing him grabbing hold of Paul Gascoigne’s privates during a match against Newcastle United with all the zeal of a drowning man grabbing hold of a life raft.
Vinnie with Emma Ford. The pair have been dating for the past couple of years
Vinnie in his first acting role as mob enforcer Big Chris in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels
In 1992 Vinnie was fined £20,000 by the FA for bringing the game into disrepute by presenting a video called Soccer’s Hard Men, a compilation of clips that many commentators said glorified foul play. But the tape caught the eye of film director Guy Ritchie, who subsequently cast Vinnie in his debut role as mob enforcer Big Chris in the 1998 smash hit movie Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
Starring roles in films such as Snatch with Brad Pitt and X-Men: The Last Stand alongside Hugh Jackman followed, but while Vinnie seamlessly made the transition from footballer to bona fide Hollywood star, his drinking started to veer out of control.
He eventually gave up alcohol in 2013, but six years later was dealt a huge blow when his beloved wife of 25 years, Tanya, died from skin cancer that had spread to her brain. The honesty with which he spoke publicly of his grief moved many – so much so that now, at 61, the one-time ‘lunatic’ is a respected ambassador for men’s mental health.
As a transformation, it has been nothing short of remarkable and no one was prouder of his achievements than his mum Glenda. As he reveals in the new series, she died a few months ago of a heart attack aged 80 and the grief, he admits, is like ‘a blanket that some invisible person throws over you. You’re never going to see your mum again and your brain just can’t figure it out.’
He was in London filming the second series of Guy Ritchie crime caper The Gentlemen for Netflix when he heard the news. ‘I pulled up by the trailer at seven o’clock in the morning and my phone went and it was my sister just shouting, “Mum’s gone. Mum’s gone.” It was quite horrific.’ Everyone on set told him to go home, ‘but I said, “No way,” and I stayed at work. I find that if you just get your head down and keep swinging, you’ll get through it.’
The countryside has always provided Vinnie with solace and he found that’s where ‘you can kind of kneel down and have a bit of a cry and hold your head’.
Glenda and Vinnie’s dad Peter, a former gamekeeper, divorced when Vinnie was 12 – ‘I gave her away on my 18th birthday to her new husband,’ he says – and mother and son were extremely close. ‘When I went to premieres of Snatch and stuff like that, she would shake. She’d say, “You just don’t know how proud I am.” She was from a little town in Wiltshire and she couldn’t comprehend it all.’ She got to meet his Hollywood pals such as Lock, Stock co-star Jason Statham. ‘And they all loved her. She was never pretentious, she was never loud. Until she had a drink,’ he laughs, ‘and then she was like me!’
Did losing his mother bring to the surface all the feelings of grief he had experienced with Tanya? ‘No, it was different. With Tanya, there was a lot of anger and a lot of giving up, and I had to get out of that,’ he says.
Vinnie with his late mother Glenda in 2003
Vinnie Jones and Tanya, his wife of 25 years. Tanya died from cancer in 2019
He and Tanya dated as teenagers in Watford, drifted apart and had children with other partners – Vinnie a son, Aaron, now 34, and Tanya a daughter, Kaley, 38 – but got back together and married in 1994.
‘When you’re with someone for 30 years, every day generally, and then that person just disappears off the planet and it’s the first time it happens to you, that’s your coping mechanism,’ he says of his despair. ‘You get this anger, this wanting, this screaming and shouting and tears and disbelief.’
When his mum passed away, however, ‘I’d already read that book. It wasn’t as shocking.’ Now, when the blanket of grief descends, as it did with his mum’s passing, ‘I’ll go and do something. I’ll get the dog, I’ll go for a walk, go and get my hair cut… something like that.’ Does he still talk to his late wife? ‘Yeah,’ he admits. ‘You know, I make my bed every day and at certain times I do, yeah.’
Given that one viewer claimed In The Country had saved his life, has Vinnie himself ever had suicidal feelings? ‘Many years ago when I was footballing, and it was all through the drink… The anxiety and everything else that goes with drinking pulls you down and I would say there’s a big proportion of suicides that are alcohol-built.’
A ‘social alcoholic’ rather than someone who ‘woke up and drank a bottle of vodka’, he imbibed ‘for the high, for the sugar, for the buzz and to get me through that first two hours of being, “F***ing hell, he’s nuts!” But after that two hours of being funny and nuts and making people laugh, I became… an a***hole.’
After appearing in the Royal Variety Performance in 2001, he ended up in Elton John’s dressing room. ‘Obviously he wasn’t drinking [Elton got sober in 1990], so I helped myself to two or three bottles of red wine.’ When the time came to be introduced to the Queen, ‘I was leaning to one side and Samantha Mumba was holding me up on her arm. The Queen came along and shook my hand, and I said, “Ma’am, are you using your Cup Final tickets this year?” and she said, “Excuse me?” and I said, “Well, if you’re not, I can get you a few quid for them.”’ Her Majesty promptly walked off. ‘She didn’t understand the humour.’
Vinnie, his dog Pip and singer Rag’n’Bone Man for the latest series of In The Country
The countryside has always provided Vinnie with solace
It was after he was reported to the FA for biting a reporter’s nose in a Dublin bar in 1995 that thoughts of suicide flashed through his mind. ‘When I sobered up, that’s when the walls came in on me and the reality of what I’d done being drunk.’
Though the suicidal feelings eventually passed, the drinking continued until, in 2013, at the age of 48, he got sober. ‘We’ve all got a dog and your dog is your ego,’ he says. ‘I went to a psychologist and he said, “Your dog, Vin, it’s massive.” Guy Ritchie said the same to me. “Vin, your dog is out of control.” And the source of it was alcohol.’
By giving up drink, ‘you get back your humanity, your morals and your true self,’ he says. Certainly, it’s hard to square the aggressive Vinnie of old with the chap in front of me, and while many a salty word emanates from his handsome, battered face, he is otherwise charm itself. The only regret he has with regards to going sober, he admits, is that he didn’t do it ten years earlier.
‘A lot of people go to AA and do the 12 Steps, but my way of doing it was, “I’ve caused enough b****cks in this life of mine for 48 years and I’m done.” I’ve won the FA Cup, I’ve won the league with Leeds United and I conquered alcohol. They’re probably the biggest three triumphs of my life.’
Nowadays, while he’s not quite the poster boy for kale-eating good living (‘I like my steak pies too much’), he has adopted a healthier lifestyle thanks to the fact that, ‘I’ve got this young lady who’s a home cook and makes me go out there and do the walking and everything else.’
Fans of the show will already know that the young lady in question is Emma Ford, 48, who he initially hired as his PA and has been dating for the past couple of years.
‘She’s got a great spirit and we kind of thank the universe every day for such a wonderful existence,’ he says. ‘It’s just really nice being in this situation where we’ve got a nice bit of work, we’ve got a nice little show going on and we’ve got each other. She’s been an absolute rock to me, so it’s fantastic.’ After being so devoted to Tanya, did he feel guilt at experiencing happiness with someone new? ‘That’s part of the process,’ he says. ‘That’s part of the five things you experience with grief. But I’m very content… I wake up every day and say, “Thank you, Lord.”’
While they have a place in Palm Springs, California, most of the couple’s time is spent in the UK, where the bulk of Vinnie’s work is. As well as the second series of the critically acclaimed show The Gentlemen later this year, in which Vinnie plays Geoff, the tough but loyal gamekeeper to Theo James’s Duke of Halstead, he’s also due to start filming the movie Viva La Madness. A Guy Ritchie gangster film that will reunite him with Jason Statham, it promises to be ‘loud, fast and unapologetically patriotic’ – a phrase that could easily be applied to Mr Jones himself.
Does he think he’ll ever be knighted like his good pal David Beckham? ‘Not in a million years. But I think it would be a monumental thing for me to get an MBE or OBE or something like that. I’m not looking for it, but if I keep helping people in the mental health area, that would be a massive moment in my life to get something like that as recognition. It kind of makes you part of the British Empire, doesn’t it? Like you’re in the club somehow.’
Who knows? It might even persuade King Charles to part with his FA Cup Final tickets.
- Series 3 of Vinnie Jones In The Country airs from February 2 on Discovery+.