Vinnie Jones makes first public appearance with new girlfriend Emma Ford - five years after the tragic death of his wife Tanya
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Vinnie Jones made his first public appearance with new girlfriend Emma Ford at his West End debut of Only Fools and Horses at the Eventim Apollo on Wednesday.
The footballer-turned-Hollywood hard man, 59, looked happier than ever as he cosied up for a photo with script consultant and actress Emma ahead of the gala performance.
The couple, who met in 2022 when Vinnie employed Emma to be his PA, looked loved-up as Vinnie wrapped an arm around his partner and Emma placed a caring hand on his chest.
The actor dressed smart in all black, coordinated with Emma who also donned a black blazer, trousers and stylish burgundy boots.
Vinnie's late wife Tanya, who he married in 1994, tragically diagnosed with skin cancer in 2013, passing away six years later in 2018 after it spread to her brain.
The actor has taken on notorious gangster Danny Driscoll in the West End and will star in 28 shows at London's Hammersmith Eventim Apollo from December 17.
Vinnie Jones made his first public appearance with new girlfriend Emma Ford at his West End debut of Only Fools and Horses at the Eventim Apollo on Wednesday
The footballer-turned-Hollywood hard man, 59, looked happier than ever as he cosied up for a photo with script consultant and actress Emma ahead of the gala performance
Last month, the TV star revealed that Emma had 'promised his late wife Tanya she would look after him' - as he admitted she wouldn't want him to be alone.
'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.'
But tragically she was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, and later died at the age of 53 in 2019.
Vinnie and Tanya could not have been more different, which made their love story all the more extraordinary.
He was the former football hard-man turned film star, a tattoo enthusiast with a temper so explosive he's bitten into noses, brandished shotguns - at himself and others - and has been in endless fracas on the football pitch, in bars and even on aircrafts.
The couple, who met in 2022 when Vinnie employed Emma to be his PA, looked loved-up as Vinnie wrapped an arm around his partner and Emma placed a caring hand on his chest
However, Tanya was never the object of his ire - and Vinnie has in fact before credited her for 'saving him'.
'I take my strength from Tanya,' he said of her previously. 'She has given me stability and it is my responsibility to be there for her. She's the most incredible person. We're the perfect match and I was lucky to find her.'
The pair first they 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.
Vinnie's late wife Tanya, who he married in 1994, tragically diagnosed with skin cancer in 2013, passing away six years later after it spread to her brain (Pictured in 2013)
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.
For years, Vinnie struggled with alcoholism, in 1995, bit the nose of a journalist in a Dublin bar before taking himself off with a shotgun into the woods behind his and Tanya's Hertfordshire pile, intending to end his own life in shame.
Two years later, he was convicted of assaulting a neighbour in a late-night row. He has always maintained that the shame of seeing Tanya's frail face in the court as he was given 140 hours' community service changed him.
And in 2012, in the most damaging incident of all, he was pictured kissing a girl in a nightclub in Russia - an incident he always insisted was a honey trap, but which nearly broke his 20-year marriage to Tanya.
But life had still more to throw at them. In 2013, Vinnie discovered a cancerous lump on his face, shortly before Tanya was diagnosed with melanoma, too - hers thought by doctors to be linked to the medicine she'd been taking since her heart transplant.
While Vinnie made a good recovery, Tanya's battered body had finally run out of reserves.
Vinnie and his late wife Tanya - who was 53 when she died - could not have been more different, which made their love story all the more extraordinary (pictured in 1997)
Speaking to the Mirror earlier this year, Vinnie 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.
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.
The new couple were brought together by the pandemic and Vinnie's farm in West Sussex - and she also became a star of the documentary series about his new rural life that aired on Discovery+ last November.
Emma, loved by viewers of Vinnie Jones in the Country as his patient and charming PA with a neat blonde pixie hair cut, has also quit drinking.
