Vinnie Jones In The Country

Come on.

I just wanted to show you this.

It's absolutely gorgeous. All wild blue bells.

So the main thing here is you listen.

Robin.

Chaffinch.

Woodpecker.

There's a deer.

When you're so much in the public eye,

to come here...

Not one of these animals or bird ask me for a selfie.

It's... wonderful. It's wonderful.

And they don't care because in this world,

money don't matter, cars don't matter

how big your house is, none of it matters.

Water, food, and a... And a maid.

And that's how we started up. That's how humans started.

Until the shit show that it is now.

I'm Vinnie Jones.

You may recognise me from my footballing days,

or acting on the big screen.

But what you probably didn't know was

all that hard work has been financing this.

2,000 acres in West Sussex.

Welcome to the Vinnie Jones Countryside Shit show.

I'm devoting this summer to my greatest passion.

Renovating dome buildings.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Jesus Christ.

While giving my knackered 400-year-old farmyard a new life.

It's a nightmare.

When I moved in last year, the first thing I did

was build myself a new team.

A crazy gang from my old footballing days.

In you go. Pip.

This is my family.

Late striker, Wobbly.

Everybody needs a Wobbly.

When there's shit flicking around, it always lands on me.

Basically, everything and anything that no other fucker wants to do,

there is a wobbly job, and I get lumbered with it.

So pretty much everything, really.

Oh, Chuck.

I hope this isn't on camera

cos these are really important papers.

And then there's my sweeper, Emma.

P.I. Emma is personal assistant,

but the PI actually stands for pain in the ass.

Vinnie.

She's only small, but she's tough.

Have you seen Vinnie, guys? I think he's in the shed there. Is he?

Working for Vinnie Jones is full on chaotic, manic.

Oh, there he is.

He's just like a wild race horse. I'm try...

My job is to try and keep him on the tracks.

Come on.

Because he's like a tornado.

If he's kind of sat there for five seconds,

twiddling his thumbs, it's dangerous.

Put that thing right out.

The ongoing plan for this farm is to get all these outbuildings,

which housed all these dairy cows

and transform them into living accommodation.

These run down sheds will become the courtyard of my dreams.

But going from bomb site to visitor's paradise

is a tall order.

I need an office for Emma in the abandoned stables.

Then this is another entrance, that's blocked up.

Come in here. Shower in there.

The derelict dairy, a reading room to learn scripts.

When Hollywood calls.

I need to have a right strip out in here, have all this stripped.

But this is what I need to keep me busy.

It's my way of coping with life's great challenges.

Some of these buildings are 14th and 16th century,

I'm putting another 100 years back into 'em.

I'll be relying on Wobbly... Righty-o.

..to make sure happen. No problem.

So what time frame you giving me for this?

Wobbly's one of them blokes that can turn his hands generally anything.

Vinnie is very intense. His eyes are everywhere.

Just constantly looking for things for people to do.

Not for him to do.

Obviously, we've got the film crew...

Yeah. ..for two or three months. OK.

I mean, I'm sure they... They want to see it finished.

No need to be waving, Rob. We know where you are, Rob.

I'm sure they would like to see it pretty much finished.

All right. OK.. So we gotta get out skates on.

Can you get out and let me get on then, please?

All these balls I've got in the air,

unless you keep your eyes on 'em,

on every ball, you're gonna drop one.

Our first big job, prepping the car shed footings

before 28 tons of liquid concrete arrive.

And that's in a couple of days.

Wednesday, Thursday, we should be ready to pull that, I would imagine.

Well, I want to put it all, though. I want to do here,

the dog kennel and the drive. All in one go. Yeah. OK.

What can possibly go wrong?

Particularly as I've hired me mate George...

..and his small army of local lads to do the graph.

Right. State of play, boys?

- Never stop shovelling, Jack. - I won't.

See. We can get lads at work like that, eh?

Look. What a pro! Look.

I'd imagine, at first, when they meet me, I'm...

Cos I'm like, "Yeah, crash, bang, wallop.

Let's have it..." And I think they are like.

And they've seen my movies and all that.

I mean, I've had it. When I first met Madonna, I was like...

Didn't know what to say. And then you... And you act all silly.

And you overact and you're...

And then if you look it back, you go, "What a dick!"

All this harks back to a life before football enacted.

I spent my childhood roaming the countryside,

and my teenage years grafting on the building site.

And there's another passion that I've had since I was a kid.

My toys.

He's been out for ten minutes. There's another fucking Bentley arrived.

He seems to have a new car every week.

So this is it. Now that will sound better.

The first car I ever bought was 110 pound little blue minivan.

Rode around on it, had a crash with it.

Nice, ain't it? It's subtle. Not in your face.

I had a Range Rover for many, many years

and I had the Ferrari. I've had the Rolls Royces.

My latest ride and jon, Bentley Bentyaga.

Go on then.

Better, ain't it? You want it louder? We can put a bigger exhaust on it.

How much is that?

You're talking ten grand only for a bit of noise, aren't you?

People are one car guys or girls.

Vinnie certainly got to the point where he wants to have

a multitude of cars in a stable. That's just how Vinnie is.

Tom's been doing my one 110 Land Rover.

But he's done lots of other stuff for me.

They're just great engineers.

Tom is perfection to detail.

I mean, it's all very well him getting another car.

I think that's just more paperwork for me.

I have a pile of logbooks.

Land Rovers, tractors, a Bentley. It's like toys.

I think it's very odd when you've kind of come from nothing

and you fought for every penny, every dollar,

not to sort of say, "Oh, I just got that."

"Everything is what it costs." And it's quite wrong.

It can be vulgar. You know, and you find yourself

falling into that sometimes.

I want to get a nice old bus or coach

and convert it.

But when I'm on set, filming.

Um... Guy Ritchie's got fantastic ones..

But he's got a wood burner in it.

Right. This is what I wanted to speak to you about.

This is a double lever gun case, right, which has never been used.

We got this and we put in there, water,

kettle, sugar, coffee, tea.

You know, what it's like in the films.

You got to ask the runners,

"Can you make me a cup of tea?" It's shit.

He never stands still. Sometimes you just got to slow them down a little bit.

I want to do this. I want to take over the world.

This is what I normally do. Walk into my trailer...

Which looks a bit...

Kettle.

He's not drinking. I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking.

This is my go to work gear.

Look. Tea bags, sugar.

Do you get the idea, then, Tom?

He's always coming up with different ideas.

Cheers, Tom. He's just... He's unstoppable.

There he goes off on the road.

On top of these home farm projects, I've also taken on

150 acres of forgotten countryside right next door.

Everything's grown up, innit?

Do I know much about conservation?

Not really. Because now. I started looking into it,

you know, the ecosystem is very fragile.

So I need to hold it up a little bit

in this little corner of west Sussex.

But when it comes to protect endangered British wildlife,

me and George are not off to the best of starts.

What's that? GEORGE: I don't know. Hey!

Is that Johnny? No. It is.

I'm telling you. No way. Hold on. Hold on. It bloody is, mate.

I haven't seen here for 13 years coming here?

No. I'm pretty sure that was, you know,

No way. It is, it is.

Oh, my God.

Flies around it. Look at that.

Oh, my God. Look at that.

That ain't been dead long.

I don't think for one minute, that you know,

the dodo is gonna start reappearing at the farm.

But an ambition would be to actually see

a hedgehog in the fields and not dead on the road.

We've got to do something.

Come in.

It's another day and another dollar on the Sussex farm.

But this morning, me and Pete have a mystery to solve.