The minister should remember the first law of holes lest he ends up being buried in one, as his special adviser might say.m.harrison independent.co.uk. Eat you heart out, Lee Bowyer. As the Leeds United midfielder comes to terms with the ramifications of his recent court case – a club fine, a civil action, and possibly a government inquiry – he might be forgiven for casting an envious eye over one of football’s earlier bad boys, Vinnie Jones. For as Bowyer adds up the financial and professional cost of his drunken night out in Leeds, Jones is strutting his stuff as the lead actor in a new British film, The Mean Machine, which opens on Boxing Day.

Television Career: appearances on Sean’s Show (with Sean Hughes), This is Your Life, Royal Variety Show, numerous adverts including Walkers Crisps and Bacardi. Videos include Soccer’s Hard Men and Vinnie’s Revenge.Hobbies: fishing, shooting, greyhound racing, horse racing(he owns a horse called Gone in Sixty Seconds).He says: “When you see my eyes go, get out of the fucking way!”They say: “If there was a nuclear explosion or something, wiping everything out, you’d somehow bet that Vinnie would be left standing. He’s indestructible.” ­ Guy Ritchie, director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch Eat you heart out, Lee Bowyer. Yet as he bustled through the public relations whirlwind last week, including a gala premiere in London, it is possible that Jones might have thought momentarily of Bowyer, and his teammate Jonathan Woodgate, and reflected how close he came to such a shameful turn during his own football career.For those who recall Vinnie Jones’s playing days, the notion of him having a moment of solemn self-analysis will probably raise a laugh. Here was one of the most formidable hard men who ever pulled on football boots, patrolling the midfield area like a Rottweiler without a conscience, downing any opponent who dared take him on, and, in the age-old Scottish football term, more than ready to “get his retaliation in first”. By rights, when Jones’s playing career wound down in the mid-1990s, the world of football would have breathed several sighs of relief, dispatched him to some obscure club as an assistant coach and would have happily forgotten about him until something bad happened.But Vinnie – he has single name recognition now – has trounced many of his detractors, not just by force of his staying power but also by his re-invention as an increasingly convincing movie actor, albeit one, so far, of fairly limited repertoire.

In his breakthrough movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he was a gangster, and his first Hollywood cameo came as a gang member in the car heist movie Gone in 60 Seconds. He was a robber in Snatch, a pimp in Night at the Golden Eagle, and now, with acute irony, he leads as a jailed footballer who coaches his prison football team in The Mean Machine, an English remake of an earlier Robert Aldrich film.Jones has already won several acting awards, including Best Newcomer and Actor of the Year given by the British movie magazine Empire. So while his range has been limited by his previous persona as a football hard-nut, he has acquitted himself well, and the real test of his acting ability, and of the casting directors’ imagination, will come as he moves into less belligerent roles. His next two projects are said to be a children’s movie and a romantic comedy, with Vinnie playing a hero in both.Such elevation would scarcely have been thought possible when Jones first came to public attention, during a 1987 Division One game between Wimbledon, whom he’d joined from non-league Wealdstone the year before, and Newcastle United at The Dons’ Plough Lane ground. The name of the stadium always seemed to suit Wimbledon’s agricultural style – hard-tackling, long passes and, what they call in the trade “fight balls”, where players win a vital touch by physical aggression in the penalty area.Jones’s response to the dribbling skills of a young, curly-haired Geordie midfielder by the name of Paul Gascoigne was to grab him by the testicles after one particular piece of effrontery.

It was captured by a photographer and became an apt image of what Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, as they called themselves, were all about.At the time, the team featured hard players with strong characters – John Fashanu, Dennis Wise, Lawrie Sanchez and Jones. They would play pranks on each other and the manager, Bobby Gould, in the dressing room or on the training pitch. They would go out drinking, or to a night at the dogs, or a day at the greyhounds. They were “living it large”, but because of their squaddie mentality and physical conditioning, they were also a formidable team to beat.Vinnie’s greatest moment came in 1988 when Wimbledon fought their way through to the FA Cup Final to face the predominant team of the decade, Liverpool. It should be said that Wimbledon had entered the Football League only 11 years previously, and risen through to the top flight by 1986, buying players on the cheap, and finding promising ones, like Jones, from the non-League bargain basement. So the contest was effectively between aristocrats and peasants.The first sign of an upset occurred in the players’ tunnel before the game.