FOOTBALL’S most notorious hardman Vinnie Jones is glad to have turned his back on his “lunatic” heavy-drinking past that featured brushes with the law in its wilder moments.
Twelve years sober, the 59-year-old former Wimbledon midfielder who became a Hollywood star reveals all is now “quiet” in his life with new partner Emma Ford on his West Sussex farm.
But when I meet the actor at his former club’s stadium, where he is filming an advert for the British Heart Foundation charity, there is still a mischievous glint in his eye.
Memories of a three-decade feud with Gary Lineker suggest that although he is no longer in Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang of wildman players, there may still be a bit of the Crazy Gang left in the man who was sent off 12 times in his career.
Last week Gary told how the only player who had had a “pop” at him over critical comments he had made on Match Of The Day was Vinnie.
And according to the man himself, it was far more than a “pop”.
Vinnie — whose best-known roles include 1998 crime caper Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and this year’s hit Netflix series The Gentlemen — recalls how Gary “said he’d rather watch [now-defunct teletext service] Ceefax than watch Wimbledon”.
Vinnie was not amused, and said: “If I’d got hold of him I’d have ripped him a f***ing new ahole.
“So when I saw him in a hotel in Dublin, I threw me f***ing dinner at him and said, ‘Well, you want to say something now, big ears?’”
The 1995 set-to also involved Vinnie throwing slices of toast at Gary.
But the Ceefax putdown was not Gary’s only snipe at the Crazy Gang, and a year later he said that Vinnie was “no benefit to the game”.
The club then hit back at former England striker Gary, saying he had the “charisma of a jellyfish”.
Three years later all appeared to be well when the pair appeared together in a Walkers crisps advert.
But today Vinnie says with a grin: “He’s not on my Christmas card list. I’m sure I’m not on his.”
The in-demand actor — who has a second series of The Gentlemen coming up as well as Paramount+ fly-on-the-wall documentary series Vinnie Jones In The Country — admits he was too aggressive in the old days.
And he reveals it was Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones who turned his life around.
Vinnie’s problems started when he was 12, with the divorce of his parents Peter and Glenda.
He said: “It was my first kind of trauma in my life, because it wasn’t common then. It was looked down on.
“I had a lot of aggression as a young man. And when I went to a psychologist, we pinpointed it back to the aggression, mental health and frustration.
“Put that in a glass and put beer with it, and then you’ve got a fing lunatic on your hands.”
When Vinnie became a semi-pro player with non-league Wealdstone in 1984, aged 19, there was an ingrained drinking culture in football.
Four years later, after signing for Wimbledon in 1986, he became a household name when he famously grabbed Paul Gascoigne’s private parts during a match against Newcastle United.
After he retired from football a decade later aged 34 he made his movie debut in Lock, Stock and headed to Los Angeles.
There he formed a celebrity football team called Hollywood United, whose players included Steve Jones and Robbie Williams.
The hard-drinking party lifestyle continued, until ex-punk wildman Steve told him some home truths.
Vinnie recalls: “We’d had a good drink one night and I phoned Steve. I said, ‘I haven’t got a problem’. He went, ‘Yeah, you have’. He knew.
He said, ‘we’ve all got a dog.’ He said, ‘yours is a big bastard. You’ve got to control it. You’ve got to keep it in the kennel
Vinnie on advice he received from Guy Ritchie
“Steve’s 30, 40 years sober now. And he was the one I turned to.”
But on the rocky road to quitting alcohol he fell off the wagon, and it was Lock, Stock director Guy Ritchie who helped him, with an alcohol analogy about his “dog” being out of control.
Vinnie recalls: “He said, ‘We’ve all got a dog. Yours is a big bd. You’ve got to control it. You’ve got to keep it in the kennel’.
“That helped me, what Guy said.”
Now sober, Vinnie is glad to have put past dramas behind him, such as doing community service for a drunken air rage incident in 2003.
He says: “When you’re getting a shower at nine o’clock at night and crash out and go to sleep, you know you’ve had a great day, you ain’t caused any bks.
“There ain’t no copper coming round the next morning. You ain’t speed-dialling the florist on a Monday morning to send flowers to people you’ve upset.
“And your morals are intact, aren’t they?”
Vinnie’s level-headedness is even more remarkable given the heartache he has faced in the past decade.
In July 2019 his wife Tanya died aged 53 after suffering cancer.
It was her health problems that first got him involved with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in 2012.
Tanya’s heart had stopped while giving birth to daughter Kaley and she had needed a heart transplant.
Vinnie says: “We definitely had a connection with heart troubles. We’ve had our fair share.”
Vinnie met Tanya when they were both 12, when they became next-door neighbours in Watford, Herts, and he says: “We dated at 16.”
But they both found other partners.
Tanya gave birth to Kaley in 1987 with her footballer husband Steve Terry, and Vinnie had a son, Aaron, with his then-girlfriend Mylene Elliston in 1991.
However, the relationships did not last, and eventually he and Tanya got together and married in 1994.
The first thing I do is make my bed in the morning. I’ve got that level, absolutely pristine it is
Vinnie
In his first advert for the BHF he urged people to perform life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, on anyone who had suffered a cardiac arrest by pushing down “hard and fast” on their chest in time to the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive.
That campaign, he says, “saved a lot of lives” and now he hopes to encourage 270,000 people to learn the five steps of CPR through a new social media advert.
Titled Every Minute Matters, it was made in conjunction with bookie Sky Bet, which is donating £10,000 to the charity for every stoppage-time winner scored this season.
After Tanya died, Vinnie said it would be an “impossibility” for him to wed again because their marriage had been “perfect”.
However, he has grown close to personal assistant Emma, 47, who works on his TV show Vinnie Jones In The Country.
Together they tackle all the problems that come with running a farm.
Vinnie has not commented publicly on the relationship, but when asked if he is going to settle down with Emma he replies: “It’ll all be nice and quiet. Everything’s nice and quiet at the farm, put it that way.”
At the moment it is harvest time, so they have their hands full getting the crops in.
He continues: “It’s my favourite time of the year, the harvest. I love it when they cut all the corn.
“I’ll jump on the tractor and help the lads bale in. It’s great.”
He reveals that he has sold his Los Angeles home and only has a pad at a golf club in Palm Springs, where he spends three months of the year.
In January the former wild man of football will turn 60, but there will be no big party with his old mates Guy, Steve and Brad Pitt.
He says: “The old Vinnie would have had a big bash. I’m done with it all really.
“I like being in Sussex, where I’m out of the bubble. I’m off the radar.”
