Jo says her wild days have earned her an unexpected title from her grandkids
Leaving behind a life of drink, drugs and debauchery as the ultimate rock chick, Jo Wood says there’s a lasting legacy from her wild days. The former wife of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood says she’s earned the title Gangster Gran – after coughing to taking drugs to her some of her grandchildren.
Former model Jo, 70, recalls how the curious kids quizzed her on what she got up to in a new interview with Good Housekeeping UK’s podcast, ‘My Life in A Biscuit Tin’. “They call me gangster Gran,” she laughed. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but I was in the car with them and they turned round, they were giggling, two of them [grandchildren, Maggie and Kobe] and they went, ‘Gran, have you done any drugs?’ I said, ‘Of course I have, but I don’t recommend it.’
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“I said, ‘Because it didn’t get me anywhere except lots of sleepless nights.’ And they said, ‘What was it like?’ I told them I had fun at the time, but that was the situation that I was in.”
Jo, who famously spent three decades partying with her ex-husband Ronnie, 77, said she had to tell the truth as it’s public knowledge. “You can’t be dishonest, because they’ll find out,” she explained. “So, I tried to warn them that it was a waste of time, but I was in a very special situation. So then they said, ‘We’re going to call you gangster Gran from now on.’”
Jo was married to Rolling Stones rocker Ronnie for 24 years between 1985-2011 and the two share children Leah, 46, and Tyrone, 41. She is also mum to son, Jamie, 50, from her first marriage to clothing entrepreneur Peter Greene.
Recalling living in New York with the family in the 80s – and how a terrifying encounter sparked a return to the UK. “New York in the early eighties was horrible,” she said. “Ronnie was in the studio and I looked out the window one night and there was this guy smashing this car to get in it. And I shout out the window, ‘Hey, what are you doing? And he looked up and he pointed his knife at me. I thought, ‘I think it’s time to go home’. And then I got worried about the kids. I thought, they can’t live here.”
The businesswoman now lives the quiet life in an eco-friendly countryside cottage in Northamptonshire. She has embraced ‘off-grid’ living, generating her own electricity and even nurturing her own vegetable patch. An advocate for all things organic, she has created their health capsule supplement Longevity and her own fragrance company Jo Wood Organics.
Long gone are the booze and drug-fuelled nights. She previously said: “I could drink all night, suffer the next day and not touch a drop for a few days. I never had a problem with it. I used to smoke a joint every evening and then one day I thought ‘No, I don’t want this any more’ and stopped. I’m lucky like that.”
Jo has been a regular on our screens, from Strictly Come Dancing In 2009, to Celebrity MasterChef in 2013. She has also appeared on Celebrity First Dates and The Island.
Looking back to her younger self, Jo said she’d have some words of advice for her. “Go with the flow,” she said. “I do worry on set if something’s going on, but I try not to. I don’t want to be a worrier, and I try not to have any fear. I think fear, as my mother would say, is man’s greatest enemy. So it’s good to have no fear.”
The full episode with Jo Wood available now on all major podcast platforms.
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