Vinnie Jones Journey: From Darkness to Redemption

Football ace Vinnie Jones now leads a quiet life on a farm in West Sussex with his girlfriend Emma Ford.

But many will remember him being part of Wimbledon's FA Cup-winning 'Crazy Gang' in the 1980s, before going on to become a 'hard man' in Hollywood action movies. 

But behind his hardman persona, the star, 61, has faced many hardships, including alcoholism, mental health struggles, and the loss of his wife Tanya.

In a new  documentary titled Untold UK: Vinnie Jones, the former footballer, 61, recalled having suicidal thoughts after his 1995 assault on journalist Ted Oliver.

The incident happened in a Dublin hotel following an abandoned England-Ireland football match. 

The footballer suddenly grabbed Daily Mirror journalist Ted Oliver, put him in a headlock, and clamped his teeth around the reporter's nose.

He explained to the shocked newspaperman: 'I only do that to people I like.'

The renowned journalist then requested a photographer and splashed the story on the front page the following morning. Vinnie was also reported to the FA.

At the time, Vinnie was also working as a columnist for News Of The World, which Piers Morgan was the editor of.

Piers had sent Vinnie over to Ireland to report on the 1995 match between England and the Republic of Ireland.

Following a party before the game, Vinnie thought he could report on the match from just watching it in the bar.

However, due to a riot caused by Combat 18, the game was abandoned.

'I mean when's the last time an international game gets abandoned? How's my luck?,' Vinnie said.

'I'm having a beer in the hotel. Before you know it, now... You're pretty p****d up.

'And I'll be totally honest, I don't really know what was said or what happened because of the booze.

 'And then the next minute, I was front page, not the abandoned game.'

'F***! What have you done, ' he added.

 Vinnie defend his actions, claiming that the bite was a 'prank that went wrong'.

However, when he asked Ted not to publish the story, he firmly replied: 'You should have thought about all that.'

Oliver wrote a detailed, front-page exposé and documented Vinnie's other erratic behavior from that night.

This included throwing toast at Gary Lineker, pouring orange juice on another reporter, and disputing a hotel bill.

Sharing his version of events, Piers said: 'He got very drunk. and he got into a fracas, it was described to me, with a guy called Ted Oliver. And he bit half his nose off.'

Despite remaining strong in front of the public, Vinnie was suffering with his mental health from the fallout.

Speaking on his behaviour, former  Bobby Gould said: 'I could tell that this is not right. 

'The way he was talking and the way he was behaving. The alcohol was doing something way out of order.

'You know, it affected him much deeper, this one.'

Vinnie explained that it was not the culture at the time to get somebody to give you help.

'So I go back to the booze again,' he added.

Due to the public backlash from the incident, Piers ultimately had to sack Vinnie due to his actions, despite him releasing a mea culpa.

'I didn't want to fire him. I loved Vinnie. Personally, I loved him. Professionally, he was a brilliant columnist. But I underestimated just how much it got to him,' Piers said. 

Vinnie then found himself in a mentally vulnerable position. 

He explained: 'I was on the bed and was just curled up in the, you know, in like, the baby position. I was just curled up like that. And I was like... Enough.

'Can't keep doing this to people. Can't do it to the family. So, I thought I'd go for a walk up the wood. 

'I took the gun. Walked up the wood, and then... All stupid things go through your head.

'And the easiest thing to do was just stop it right there and then. That would have been it.

'And then I sort of came round. It's like being knocked out, I suppose, like in a boxing ring, and you come round and there's all the screaming, the shout, and it's all muffled and everything else, slow motion.

'And it just goes... [whooshes]. And you're kind of back and you go, 'Right, f*** this.''

After ditching his football career in 1999, he reinvented himself for a life in Hollywood, swapping his trademark aggression on the pitch to play bad guys and thugs on the silver screen.

In 2013, Vinnie decided to ditch the booze and opted for a sober life. 

His decision came after he was pictured kissing Russian singer Lama Safonova outside a Moscow bar.

The incident led to him issuing a public apology to his then wife, Tanya and revealing he had entered therapy.

Tanya and Vinnie first met aged 12 - at a cricket match in their hometown of Watford - and flirted self-consciously during their teens.

'Even when he was a tearaway lad, I knew he had a good heart,' Tanya said of Vinnie.

One night, he mustered up the courage to walk her home, but nothing happened, other than an awkward tea with her mother.

And that was that, until the mid-Eighties, when she had split from a former partner and was a single mother to daughter Kayley, then four.

Vinnie, meanwhile, was single and, by chance, living just a few doors up the same road in Hemel Hempstead.

Vinnie quickly adjusted to his new responsibilities: taking care of Tanya and Kayley, as well as his son Aaron from a previous relationship.

And he was notoriously full of grand gestures. He bombarded Tanya with flowers and bought her ten dresses at a time. On Valentine's Day, he gave her a Peugeot convertible, two dozen red roses and a little note telling her that she held the key to his heart.

But for Tanya, it was his unexpected quiet kindness that cemented their love, such as the endless visits when she was admitted to hospital for gynaecological issues and the fact that he didn't blanch when she told him her health problems meant they'd never be able to have children together.

Tanya's complications first began when her heart had struggled while giving birth to her daughter at age 21.

She was saved after being given a heart transplant, using the heart of a 14-year-old German boy. She later went on to become one of the longest-surviving heart recipients.

Tanya's father had even warned Vinnie of his daughter's fragile health and begged him to leave if he wasn't serious.

But while the couple's love might have been strong, their 25-year marriage had to endure far more texture than most, even aside from her relentless health problems.

In 2013, they were both diagnosed with melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which kills around 2,000 people every year in the UK, and fought it together, getting the all-clear two years later. 

However, the disease would later return for Tanya.

Vinnie previously described the heartbreaking story of how Tanya learned her cancer had spread to her brain in a phone call at their home in Palm Springs on Christmas Eve while they had 15 or so family members round for Christmas. 

It was the moment they realised 'it's beat us', Vinnie wrote in his memoir, but Tanya was determined to have 'the best Christmas ever' so kept it secret from everyone. 

'The bravery of her is unfathomable,' he said. 'All's she wanted to do was please people.'

Tanya sadly passed away in the couple's home in Los Angeles in 2019.

Opening up about her final days in an interview with the Mirror in 2019, Vinnie recalled: 'In that last week of her life when the doctors said there were no more treatments, I never told her she was dying. 

'We never spoke of that, I didn't want her to know. In the hospital I slept there every night and Kayley would come every morning.'

Four years after her passing, Vinnie admitted that he still felt 'broken' inside and 'struggles to comprehend' going to bed on his own.

In an interview, Vinnie spoke of how he throws himself into work and has sought help from a psychologist to try to not feel like he is 'drowning' in his own despair.

'[Grief] is a ghost, it's a blanket. It wraps around you and it pulls you down. You don't know when it's going to happen, why it happens. It just happens,' he told Stuff.

'You've got to try and get your head above water, breathe in as long as you can because you know you're going to be pulled under again.

'You got to give people what they want, or you f*****g drown. It's f*****g exhausting [Sometimes I want to] build a 50 foot wall around to keep everybody out and keep me in... My spirit may be broken inside, but I think I've got enough knowledge and enough experience to cope with it.'

The following year, Vinnie found love with his PA Emma Ford, whom he has spoken of how Emma has 'calmed' him down after years of hard drinking and depression left him 'rotting inside'.

He admitted that he will never get over the death of his wife Tanya but said that his new partner and happiness show that a 'flower can grow and bloom' from the darkest of times.

He said: 'Moving forwards, we meet other people that we are fond of and we fall in love with and vice versa. Maybe she's calmed me down a little bit. Maybe she brings a different perspective to it all for me.'

Emma, a former PA to Mick Jones from The Clash who also worked as a showbiz reporter on Hollywood red carpets, had returned to the UK after years spent working and partying hard in LA.

Speaking to the Mirror, he admitted he had found love again with Emma. 

It is happy news for Vinnie, who said in 2019: 'I will never be with anyone else'.

'You know, after four months, four years, five years, 10 years, you just keep moving forwards, the grief is always going to be in there', the star of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels said.

But he added: 'It's how other things can control it. It's how much the flower can grow and and bloom. I think, for me, grief was always black and grey, but it doesn't have to be. It can be colours and happy memories'.

Emma had 'promised his late wife Tanya she would look after him' - as he admitted she wouldn't want him to be alone.

The pair met in 2022 when Vinnie employed Emma to be his PA - and he has now revealed Emma made a sweet pledge to Tanya when she came into the actor's life.

'She said to me that she had had a chat with Tanz and said, 'I'm going to look after him for you',' he said. 'That was kind of a defining moment for me.'

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Vinnie admitted Tanya would have wanted him to be happy and find a new partner.

He said: 'I'm at peace because does she want you to be on your own? No, because you're not going to be happy.'

After quitting Hollywood, Vinnie moved to West Sussex, where he owns a 400-year-old farm that spreads across 2,000 acres.

Vinnie bought the farmland back in 2022 and, since then, has immersed himself in country life by renovating the farm into a sustainable agribusiness - a process that's documented in the Discovery+ series, Vinnie Jones in the Country.

Speaking about the renovation project during an appearance on The One Show in October last year, Vinnie told hosts Alex Jones and Roman Kemp: 'It brings a lot of lads together. You know I think mental health is such a massive thing now and going through it myself, obviously, over the last three or four years.

'It's brought a few lads together and I've taken on this farm.'

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch or go to www.samaritans.org. 

You can contact Alcoholics Anonymous on 0800 917 7650 or help@aamail.org