Reality star Jo Wood has captivated viewers on shows ranging from Strictly Come Dancing to Celebrity MasterChef and Celebrity Island.
But now the ex-wife of Rolling Stones hellraiser Ronnie Wood is done with such things.
Instead, the 67-year-old wants to focus on fresh projects while revelling in her new life in the countryside.
Jo moved to rural Northamptonshire in 2019, turning her back on London and shocking friends who were convinced she’d soon be back.
But Jo has no regrets although “everything went wrong” when she began work on her listed farmhouse.
She says: “It was a real change coming from Camden to here. The house is completely off-grid.
“I have a borehole for water and produce my own power. In the beginning everything went wrong and I kept thinking ‘What have I done?’
“But I’m really happy now everything’s nearly finished.
“It’s so nice to wake up to the sound of the birds instead of police cars zooming up the road.”
Jo’s new, calmer existence is very different from her hard-partying life with her ex-husband Ronnie, 74.
The pair met in 1977 and married eight years later, having two children, Leah, now 43 and Tyrone, 38.
While Jo at first believed she and Ronnie would “be together forever”, they divorced in 2009 after he had an affair with a 19-year-old cocktail waitress.
Jo has since said: “I was devastated but in time realised that splitting from Ronnie was the best thing that could have happened. I got my freedom back.”
One of the things she is proudest of is bouncing back from the divorce to start all over again. She says: “A highlight was starting my career again when I was 53.
“By then most people are deciding when they’re going to retire. I can’t imagine ever retiring from what I do. I don’t want to.
“I want to always work, maybe not as hard as I used to, but I always want to work and be creative. I’ve had a very interesting life...and it’s not over!”
Although party nights on tour with the Stones are now just a memory, Jo hasn’t fully left her former ways behind.
She says: “Tyrone has converted a barn into a bar – so I have my own pub!”
The dark skies of the countryside have also given her the chance to indulge in one of her favourite hobbies – astronomy.
She says: “My sister Lize got me a great big telescope when I moved so I could sit in the garden and look at the sky. On clear nights it’s great to just look at what’s out there.” Self-confessed UFO obsessive Jo believes she saw a flying saucer while on holiday in Brazil in 1996.
She says: “I didn’t think I would have an encounter myself but I was always fascinated about what is out there.
“It would be really weird if we were alone on the only living planet among millions of stars.
“I’m not scared of being abducted. I think the aliens would be more scared of me!” Jo has even got her 10 grandchildren involved in her alien hunt. She says: “They’re very into it, especially Leah’s Otis, who is seven.
“And 12-year-old Maggie sent me a picture of weird lights she saw in the sky. I replied ‘Well, that’s definitely not a plane – that’s a UFO outside your window’.
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In 2018 Jo turned her interest into a podcast, Alien Nation with Jo Wood.
She now plans a second series, recorded in her converted barn.
In the first series, she chatted to experts and celebrities including Robbie Williams, Shaun Ryder and Brix Smith about their extraterrestrial encounters. And Jo says she would love one day to turn her podcasts into a TV show.
She adds: “I’d like to go to places where they have seen a lot of UFOs.
“Sometimes you can’t get near to because of the army stopping you, which makes you realise they actually have something.
“I would really love to do a Jo Wood Investigates show. There are all sorts of mysteries in the world – and I just want to find them all out.”
- BLAZE channel’s UFO Week is running from 9pm until this Sunday.
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