Vinnie Jones still speaks to his wife Tanya a year after her death

Vinnie Jones has told The Big Issue that he starts every day with a chat to his late wife Tanya.

Speaking just before the one-year anniversary of her death, the footballer-turned-actor talked about how he’s coping since he lost her to cancer in July last year.

“Now I take things day to day. I get up in the morning and I have a little chat with her when I’m making my bed. And then I somehow muddle through the day,” he said.

Vinnie was by Tanya’s side when she passed away at their LA home in July 2019.

“It’ll be a year on Monday [July 6] since she passed and it was our 26th wedding anniversary on the 25th of June, so it’s been a hard couple of weeks,” he added. “The grief sort of creeps up on you like the fog. And you have to get through it and get to the sunshine on the other side.”

Vinnie also looked back on the couple’s quarter century together, and his early attempts to get her attention.

“I still remember the first time I saw Tans,” he said. “We were 12 years old in Watford. We’d gone to a cricket match, and we met while the dads were playing cricket. And then we met again when we were 16 and I walked her home from the pub. I was showing off. Was she impressed? I think so, because we stayed together forever.”

Vinnie Jones was speaking to The Big Issue for our regular Letter to My Younger Self feature, reflecting on the advice he’d like to give his 16-year-old self. He also revealed how the public has frequently misunderstood him, plus the career advice he got from Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins.

Read the full interview in this week’s edition of The Big Issue, available now from your local vendor or our online shop.

Image: Getty