Footballer and actor Vinnie Jones held an audience of 650 people enthralled and almost in tears at the Breast Cancer Foundation Gala on Saturday, 1 Oct., as he told of loving and losing his wife Tanya, who died of cancer in July 2019.
The gala often features female survivors who share tales of their struggles with the disease, but this year, the audience heard from some of the men who have stood side-by-side with their partners as they fight cancer, and who spoke of the impact it has on entire families.
As well as Jones, two other men – Andy Croft and Kim Lund – took to the stage to speak about their wives’ battles with cancer. Croft told of his wife Tori’s ongoing struggle against stage 4 cancer, which led to her having to be resuscitated in February this year, and Breast Cancer Foundation co-founder Lund, who lost his wife Brenda in 1998, spoke of the utter devastation of hearing a doctor tell you that your loved one has cancer.
Jones, who has written a book, ‘Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya’, explained that it was a love story he’d never wanted to tell.
The couple were married for 25 years before Tanya lost her six-year fight against cancer. She’d survived a heart transplant when she was just 21, and, Jones said, underwent regular checks at Harefield Hospital in London. “We lived from year to year,” he said.
He said, “When you have a heart transplant, you take a medication, called cyclosporine. Now, because of people like Tanya, they’re working out that the problem with this is, while it’s keeping you alive, it’s killing you at the same time, because it’s creating cancer.”
The transplant and the potential side effects of the drug were the “elephant in the room” for the couple for years, he said.
He went on to become an actor, being cast in Guy Ritchie’s popular ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’, and then in ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’.
“Out we went as a family [to Los Angeles], and thought this was going to be a one-shot wonder and we’re going to make the most of it. So, we took all our friends from Watford – 62 of them,” he said, to laughter from the crowd.
“It was fantastic, and then, as Kim said to you earlier, you go to the doctor one day, and there he sits, and tells you that there is cancer. So, we’d been fighting off the elephant in the room all this time, and now we have another one. But what we’re going to do, we’re going to fight it again. And she fought like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield put together,” he said.
After a year of radiation, blood tests and transfusions, Tanya was given the all clear, he said. Then, three years later, while on holiday in Dubai, she began feeling a pain in her ribs, which doctors later confirmed was caused by the cancer which had returned.
“That’s when events like this come together,” he said. “The only thing that will beat cancer is research – your money goes to that research. These ladies, my wife, who have given their lives, deserve that. We have to help the research, it’s the only way.”
On Christmas Eve, Jones said, doctors told Tanya and him that the cancer had moved to her brain. She did not want family and friends to know, and told him, “This is going to be the best Christmas we’ve ever had, the best. We cuddled, cried, shook ourselves up, went outside and had Christmas. You’d never know, she never gave it away.”
A few months later, 12 days after their 25th wedding anniversary, she passed away in his arms at their home, surrounded by close friends and family.
He said he was sharing his story in the hope that others can be more prepared if this happens to them.
“I have to tell this story to make you stronger, every one of you,” he told the audience. “That’s my story.”
The Breast Cancer Foundation gala is the charity’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and one of Cayman’s glitziest social events. The gala on Saturday was the first time since 2019 that it was held. Jones had been invited to attend the 2020 gala, but that, and the following year’s event, were postponed due to COVID-19.
This year’s event, at The Ritz-Carlton, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. While much of the funds raised come from ticket sales, the high-value and sought-after auction items see bidders raising their paddles to outbid one another, and Saturday night was no exception.
Tickets to see Adele in concert in Las Vegas, including flights and hotel accommodation, raised $85,000, while a dinner at Government House with Governor Martyn Roper and his wife Elisabeth sold for $26,000.
In total, $220,000 was raised in the live auction.
Organisers are still tallying how much was raised in total on the night.
Lund, in his speech, said the charity required funds more than ever this year, as the last two years, when social distancing meant large gatherings like the gala could not go ahead, had stymied fundraising efforts at a time when the need is growing.
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