Vinnie Jones finds love after fears he'd 'never be happy' due to wife's death (2024)

Vinnie Jones and new love Emma Ford (Image: PEROU/WMD/DISCOVERY )

Vinnie Jones has announced that he's fallen for his PA Emma Ford - a red carpet reporter turned celebrity assistant who previously worked with the likes of Mick Jones from The Clash. The self-confessed "party alcoholic", who'd also suffered from depression over the years, revealed that his new love interest has "calmed him down a little bit" as well as helping him to overcome the grief of losing wife Tanya.

The 59-year-old hit TV screens via the Discovery+ channel last year, sharing all about his rural lifestyle through the fly-on-the-wall series Vinnie Jones In The Country. Yet it has now emerged that the constant companion he introduced to the nation as his PA has developed more than just a professional relationship with him.

The woman he affectionately nicknames "Blondie" helped him find love after he feared he'd "never be happy again". The ex-midfielder and actor - who was watched avidly in Netflix's new series The Gentleman - had tearfully disclosed that he thought he'd "never be with anyone else".

He also sparked concern with dark comments suggesting that it wouldn't be long before he was with deceased Tanya again himself. However, he's since quit drinking and found a healthy and wholesome relationship with Emma.

Vinnie says he now understands that a flower "can grow and bloom through the darkest times". He told The Mirror: "Moving forwards, we meet other people that we are fond of and we fall in love with and vice versa.

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Vinnie Jones in the countryside (Image: DISCOVERY )

"Maybe [Emma has] calmed me down a little bit. Maybe she brings a different perspective to it all for me."

In a tearful 2019 interview, Vinnie recalled how Tanya had been "the light of his life".

"I will never be with anyone else. I'm a shell. She is the only one... whenever I let myself down, or her down, she was always the strongest, the person who I answered to," he exclaimed.

"She wouldn't give me her blessing to meet someone else – I just know her. I can't see it happening. I might have friends or whatever, [but] I would be astonished if [dating again] happens.

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Vinnie Jones and wife Tanya, who died in 2019 of skin cancer (Image: PA)

"I think I've only got a little way to go until I'm with her, in the spectrum of the universe."

He continued in an interview for entertainment website Stuff that his "spirit was broken" and that he felt agony at sleeping alone every night.

Vinnie added that he was being continually haunted by the "ghost" of "grief".

However, Vinnie has come back from his darkest days, with rumours about the pair's romance first beginning last Christmas when he and Emma were spotted enjoying a festive meal.

Now 11 years sober, he has told others: "If I can quit, believe me, you can and your life will be a million per cent better. I guarantee it."

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