I forgave Ronnie and got on with my life... we’ve got children together so you have to be friends
HOW JO WOOD GOT OVER EX’S CHEATING WAYS
Heartbroken and humiliated, Jo Wood found herself at rock bottom when Rolling Stone Ronnie left her for a 19-year-old Russian cocktail waitress.
But she refused to be beaten, found strength, and later managed to build a true friendship with her ex-husband.
She says: “After my marriage broke up I was really upset and sad, sitting on the bed. It was a Sunday and I picked up a magazine and was reading the problem page.
“A woman wrote in and said, ‘My husband left me five years ago and I still can’t get over that’. I thought, ‘I won’t be like that. I want to live. I want to have a life. I won’t let something like this stop me’.”
And she stopped resenting her cheating ex there and then.
She says: “I forgave Ronnie and I got on with my life. You have to forgive. It’s so important because, by hanging on and not forgiving, you tie yourself emotionally to them.
“By forgiving, you release yourself and you can get on with your life.” She adds: “We’ve got children together and grandchildren, it’s good to be friends.”
Ronnie’s relationship lasted just 18 months and Ekaterina Ivanova, ended up branding him the “evil goblin king”.
Former model Jo bounced into a relationship with builder Paul Scarborough, 53, until the couple split five years ago over his engagement to someone else.
BI thought I want to live. I want a life, I won’t let this stop me JO WOOD ON HOW SHE GOT BACK FROM DESPAIR
ut now that is all forgiven too. Jo, 62, has rekindled her relationship with Paul and she could not be happier. Until you get her on the subject of age difference.
“I’m only eight years older than him!” she says. “My last husband was eight years older than me, now this time I’m eight years older than my boyfriend.
“It’s not that much. He doesn’t care. He loves me for who I am. I don’t think age should be important at all.”
But the fact Ronnie, now 70, left her for a girl 41 years his junior in 2008 had to hurt. Jo had met second husband Ronnie at a party in 1977 before marrying eight years later.
They have three children together, Leah, 38, and Tyrone, 33. Ronnie adopted Jo’s son Jamie, 42, from her first marriage to clothing boss Peter Greene and helped raise Ronnie’s son, Jesse, 40, from his marriage to Krissy Findlay.
Groupies were an inevitable part of being a rock star’s wife and Jo has dealt with it by befriending the women.
She even helped Ekaterina when she accidentally set fire to her hair at Jo’s home. She apparently begged the waitress not to take her husband from her, but the teenager reportedly replied: “I am not taking him – he is leaving.”
After her very public divorce from Ronnie in 2009, Jo dipped her toe in the dating pool and went out with a TV celebrity who she says laughed about Ronnie’s affair with Ekaterina.
Last year she went on Celebrity First Dates – when she was paired with a dead ringer for her rocker ex.
Ronnie has now found love with
Hneed to get married. We’re happy as we are at the moment. I’ve been married twice. I don’t know if I want to be married a third time.
“I never thought I was going to get married at 18 but I did.
“I recently went to a wedding and they had a psychic there,” Jo recalls. “I was lined up to see her and I though. ‘Do I really want to do see a psychic? What difference is it going to make if she’s going to tell me anything?’
“All I should be living for is now. I can’t change anything either way. So I walked away.”
She laughs: “I thought, ‘Nah, I don’t want to know’.”
Jo Wood takes GOPO Joint Health (www.gopo.co.uk) for her joint pain. £18.99 for 120 capsules at supermarkets and pharmacies nationwide. er voice turning girlish, she says: “I love to cook for him. He’s really good because he eats all his dinner. He’s great. I’m sure even if he didn’t like it he’d eat it just to make me happy.”
But, despite the domestic bliss, do not expect Jo to be following Ronnie down the aisle any time soon.
Asked if they plan to tie the knot, she lets out a cackle, adding: “I don’t brought organic crackers home. “Everybody has knock backs in life, it’s how you get over them that’s important and be positive,” says Jo.
“If things went smoothly all the time, life would be pretty boring.
She says the romance today is “easy” and “nice”. They’re taking things slowly, but it sounds like Paul is a regular at her house – at meal times. GOPO Joint Health, which has helped with an old ankle injury. Jo is a passionate advocate of all things organic since overhauling her old rock and roll lifestyle in the 90s. She swears by the supplement after falling down stairs and twisting her ankle 14 years ago, saying: “I thought I’d try it and it works really well. I take it every day and when I don’t take it my ankle starts to ache.” Although father-of-four Paul is back in her life, they do not yet live together. The pair met when he was renovating her North London home in 2011. But she ended the relationship the following year, when she found out he already had a fiancee. Samantha Whittaker claimed he proposed to her in 2010 but knew their 22-year relationship was over when he Ronnie may well have Jo on speed dial, but she keeps very busy.
She has carved out a successful career as a businesswoman, recently relaunching her beauty range Jo Wood Organics. She has a natural approach to all aspects of life and takes supplement, theatre director Sally Humphreys, 39, who he married in 2012.
The couple are now parents to oneyear-old twins Gracie and Alice.
It is a thoroughly modern set-up. Jo even cut short her holiday in Spain to help babysit, when the twins were born last June.
She said at the time: “They need round-the-clock help. Sally is breastfeeding while Ronnie is on burping duty, but it’s new to both of them.”
The twins may well have been Ronnie’s fifth and sixth children, but Jo added: “I didn’t see him for two days after I gave birth.”
As supportive as she is, she once admitted she thought the set up was “bizarre” because Leah’s two children, Maggie, eight, and four-year-old Otis, are older than their aunts.