Vinnie Jones on the set of Tracked. Photo / Warner Bros. Discovery
Vinnie Jones on the set of Tracked. Photo / Warner Bros. Discovery
“I keep swinging, I keep fighting it off and just let the sun shine in.”
“In 30 years, none of them have really, really got me,” says Vinnie Jones of his “million” previous interviews as we sit opposite each other in a picturesque villa in Canterbury.
No pressure.
A man with a presence as alluring as his reputation, Jones needs little introduction. A wild footballer, a typecast action star or a smart-talking celebrity - these are the things we know of the host of Warner Bros. Discovery’s new show Tracked.
But across from me is a man in a plaid cap and an immaculate puffer gilet, profoundly shaped by his grief and radiating more warmth than the stoked fire he conveniently positions himself in front of.
The Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels actor is in New Zealand filming the show, in which teams of two evade capture from tracking professionals, and Jones naturally falls into his age-old role of burly ballbuster.
And for Jones, saying yes to coming to a place he had always dreamed of exploring was easy - not because of a lofty pay cheque – in fact, we got him “a hell of a lot cheaper” than what others were willing to pay – but because the timing was just right.
“I think I needed it right now,” he reveals, labelling the trip to the South Island “therapeutic” following the loss of his beloved wife.
“It all worked really because it was my wife’s birthday on the 14th of April. So I came through LA, went to the grave, took her flowers, came down here,” the actor details.
The 58-year-old lost his wife Tanya Terry to cancer in July 2019 – she was just 53 and the love of his life. The couple had a son Aaron, 32 and a daughter, Kayley, 36 who Vinnie adopted from Tanya’s past relationship.
Kayley previously spoke out about her parent’s relationship to the Mirror, sharing, “My parents taught me the meaning of real love. That will never die.”
And it’s clear that losing his soulmate prematurely left the actor with grief that’s still undeniably raw. Jones sinks back into his seat as he reminisces on the one person who did know him - his safe place, his best mate, his “Tanz”.
The couple met when they were just 12, and next-door neighbours in Watford, before they later reconnected and began their married life together in 1994.
“I was always never ever going to get married or anything like that and she came along, and she just changed all that, and she was such a lovely person, there was nothing wrong about her.” Tanya fought cancer for six years, and despite being by her side every step of the way, Jones heartbreakingly admits he still wishes he could have somehow saved his partner of 27 years.
Tanya had an emergency heart transplant at the age of 21, following the birth of her daughter. She then suffered kidney problems - common among transplant patients - and was twice diagnosed with cervical cancer, and later skin cancer, which took her life.
“She was a special person. When she had the heart transplant, she was saved to save me, you know. I do sometimes feel that I should have saved her, but you know, I probably did for a lot longer.”
“I’d done everything to give her a beautiful life and savour her as much as I could, you know? But we did a lot. We did a lot in 27 years.”
And while Jones knows he’s where he’s meant to be – in the great outdoors – his mind is back home in west Sussex on his farm, where he’s desperate to return to finish renovations and the dream the pair put in place together.
“I like being at the farm. Renovating, and I got me a little dog. I’m at real peace there, you know? I feel, Tanya kind of put that in place. That’s where she wanted me to be.”
He speaks with such overwhelming adoration, you begin to feel that if someone loved you even a scrap as much as he loved Tanz, you’d be the luckiest. But as the saying goes, grief is the price we pay for love, and according to Jones, he’s just got to get to a place where he’s okay with paying it - even though it’s “terrifying”.
“When things are so normal, how can they be so different and upside down, and horrific? It’s f****** every day and f****** horrific.”
Vinnie Jones and wife Tanya in London in 2001. Photo / Getty Images
But Jones has found some solace in the stillness, despite a lifetime of commotion. “I like being away from people – I never used to be like that. I always f****** loved the dressing room and all that with the lads and the banter and all.
“And since Tanz passing, I quite like me own company a bit more, but I never used to be like that. I f****** couldn’t sit still. Not for two minutes.”
But the Brit is determined to get out there and live because quite simply, it’s what Tanz would have wanted.
“She wouldn’t want you to be banging your head on the front of the car, she would be saying, ‘Enjoy this, I want you to enjoy this.’ So, I try and look for the positives and everything, right? And when the negatives come in and the grief comes in and I have this saying, I keep swinging, I keep fighting it off and just let the sun shine in.”
While he’s been open about his struggles, he credits “a new era” of men’s mental health awareness for helping him do so.
“We’re not in a world where you said ‘mental health’, and you were scared of being f****** locked up. We’re not in that world anymore. We got to make it modern. We got to make it okay. We got to help.
“And even if someone takes a little bit from me, goes f****** hell. Then I helped. You know, if you look at a bloke, and unless he’s screaming with pain with a tooth, he won’t go to the dentist until it’s too late maybe. It’s the same as mental health.”
Jones admits his own “breakdown” after the loss of his wife was “isolated” and uncharacteristically quiet without “the fanfare of it all”, seeking help from his trusted psychologist.
“You just come out and you just feel you can fall over a line and go to sleep. There’s that much s*** and weight and baggage come off your shoulders. It’s amazing,” he says of his time in therapy.
He’s also come to terms with the “demons” and knows that the “games” grief has tried to play with him are just that, “because she’s up there smiling at you is the truth of it”, he accepts.
The footballer is determined to keep giving her a reason to smile too, taking opportunities as they come his way, and calling the current one, “the best job in the world”.
Jones began professional football at 21 years old, playing from 1984 to for 1999, notably for Wimbledon, Leeds United, Sheffield United, Chelsea, and Queens Park Rangers. But it was his antics on the field that gained him even more notoriety than his ball skills - becoming infamous for grabbing the balls of Paul Gascoigne, in what become one of the most infamous sporting photos of all time. Jones also owns an oil painting of the incident.
The star then took on acting in 1998, in Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which he played a mob enforcer named Big Chris. And the largely typecast roles haven’t stopped coming since.
“I used to say that when I was a footballer, I’ve got the best job in the world, I have now and I see the longevity of this. This could go all over the world.
“This is fantastic. I get to see the whole of South Island, New Zealand, great people, see the contestants off, go back to my lodge, put the fire on,” he laughs, thinking of the contestants who remain outdoors battling the brutal South Island winter.
And in addition to sporting hero and tv host, he could add psychic to his impressive CV too, as Jones, a massive royalist, unwittingly predicted the Queen’s death in our 2022 interview.
“I think the Duke [of Edinburgh], he was the real man’s man. I know the Queen kept him in touch, but he was a rock for the Queen. I watched her last night on that Platinum Jubilee, and I think I just looked to her and I thought, she’s like, ‘yeah, I’m ready now’.”
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t far away from going to him, you know? I think that would be her wish right now if she had one.”
The Queen died three months after our interview and is now lying in rest next to her beloved Philip at King George VI Memorial Chapel.
As for Jones’ own wish for the future, it’s that people look past the football history, and actually get to know the real Vinnie.
“I’ve started a YouTube channel called The Crafty Countryman, because I’ve been interviewed by a million people and a million people have had their impressions of me and their take.
“But in 30 years, none of them have really, really got me because my passion, football was my passion, I will say that. But away from football, it was shooting and fishing.
“But no cameraman or reporter or photographer have done that with me. And I just thought, you know, it’s time.”
And maybe it is time because when you are with Jones, you see how truly wrong we’ve all got him and are instead overwhelmed with gratitude at being in the presence of a man who loved so purely and so fully, that he can proudly admit maybe his best isn’t yet to come.
Jenni Mortimer spoke to Vinnie Jones on the set of Tracked. Photo / Warner Bros. Discovery.
He doesn’t want it to be, plotting his world travels around special dates in his and Tanz’s calendar, making sure to be at her gravesite for them in a show of gratitude for those 27 years.
“You know, I think at the moment, especially now, it’s not even three years [at the time of the interview] since I lost her, and you’ve got to keep going. You’ve got to keep getting on planes, visiting different countries, especially the outdoors. I just wanted to get out there and do these road trips and it’s been very therapeutic for me.”
And Jones might just be a bit therapeutic too. While this journalist expected to come back with stories of wild antics and explosive rants, I instead left with tears in my eyes over the openness and wisdom of a truly remarkable man.
Before leaving the comfortable villa room, I stopped in my tracks, wanting to express how grateful I was for the star’s time.
“You should be,” he quipped, leaving me with his trademark wink.
It was a privilege getting to know Vinnie Jones - whoever he is.
This interview took place under embargo when Vinnie Jones was in New Zealand in 2022. Some details may be out of date.
