Vinnie Jones has described Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy an “embarrassment to their husbands” following their very public spat.
The footballer-turned-actor made the comments during his first TV interview since the death of his wife of 25 years, Tanya, from cancer.
On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, Vinnie revealed his wife never courted publicity and turned down “hundreds” of offers from the press.
“The thing with Tans is, you look at the papers now with the two football wives… Tanya got offered hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to do modelling and do stories, and she’s never done any of them,” he said.
Referring to the Rooney/Vardy feud, he added: “She’s the opposite to these girls now. And people say to me, ‘What do you think of these two girls?’
“And I think it’s quite funny and everything else, but what about the embarrassment to their husbands? No thought of the kids.”
During the emotional interview, the 54-year-old former midfielder broke down in tears as he revealed how Tanya told him not to grieve for her in a letter that he and his daughter Kaley found.
In the letter, Tanya told her husband and daughter: “Don’t grieve, I’ll be waiting for you.”
Vinnie said: “And I believe that. I’ve got something to look forward to.
“If you turn a negative into a positive… and she’s waiting, so that’s what you deal with. I think it’s the best way to do it.
“My daughter’s been strong, that letter has made my daughter very strong, she’s now leading and taking up the reins.”
Of the letter, he added: “I got her card, it said, ‘Vin, tomorrow something beautiful will happen,’ and in it she wrote that, something beautiful always happens to her that she wakes up with me, and I think with me, as much as I was a bugger, she felt safe with me, I could deal with it, whatever problem.”
Vinnie went on to say that hearing that Tanya was going to die from medical staff at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where she was being treated, was like a “sledgehammer”.
In 2013, Vinnie revealed both he and Tanya had melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, and he was later given the all-clear.
Tanya had also been treated twice for cervical cancer and underwent a heart transplant at 21, following the birth of her daughter Kaley.
They discovered last Christmas Eve that Tanya’s cancer had spread to her brain, but she pushed through the festive period while in pain for the benefit of friends and family.
“That’s the first time we broke down together, and we were in the house and we had a lot of guests there,” he said, of hearing her diagnosis.
“She didn’t want to ruin their Christmas. So that was the worst time we ever broke down together.
“She wanted to get through the Christmas so they put her on steroids… It really puffs her out. She was unrecognisable, because she was a fantastically gorgeous woman.
“She went on the steroids to get through the Christmas… She was in and out of pain but got through it brilliantly.”
Vinnie was at Tanya’s side when she died at their Los Angeles home in July.
The couple married in 1994. Tanya had daughter Kaley by her former husband – who Vinnie later adopted – and a son, Aaron, with Vinnie.
He was part of Wimbledon’s ‘Crazy Gang’ who won the 1988 FA Cup and made his film debut in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels a decade later.
