He is the swivel-hipped Welsh lothario, the self-proclaimed Sex Bomb who has, he sheepishly admits, slept with ‘hundreds’ of women during his stellar career. And it has done him no harm.
Because today, as a coach in the hit television series The Voice alongside Rita Ora and Will.i.am, and with a new world tour beginning in June, Tom Jones’s distinctive baritone and charismatic appeal have won him a whole new generation of fans.
Yet while his 𝑠e𝑥 god image has been good for business, Jones has been careful never to allow the gentlemanly facade to slip.
There have been no ‘kiss and tells’ from spurned lovers, no unsavoury revelations from unhappy family members. Indeed, since transforming himself from a penniless miner’s son from the Valleys into a £190 million music legend thanks to classics such as It’s Not Unusual, Delilah and The Green, Green Grass of Home, Sir Tom, now 74, has famously stayed firmly married to his childhood sweetheart Linda, whom he married when both were 16.
It is an intriguing contradiction. And today, for the first time, one of his early loves has broken ranks to explain how Tom Jones’s world actually works.
Far from having shared a rock’n’roll lifestyle with Sir Tom, knighted in 1999, Charlotte ‘Missy’ Laws reveals that the superstar, famed for his tight trousers and chest-baring shirts, was happiest playing darts in his dressing gown or lounging in tracksuit bottoms and wooden clogs. And while Linda tacitly accepted his promiscuous womanising, astonishingly it was the couple’s son Mark, his manager, who arranged Sir Tom’s ‘dates’.
Charlotte also tells of Tom’s crippling insecurity about his looks and reveals that the strutting showman on stage is genuinely baffled by his 𝑠e𝑥 bomb image.
Her fascinating glimpse into Jones’s real life reveals how he has managed to juggle a seemingly stable marriage with life on the road surrounded by groupies, fans and an ever-present entourage.
Charlotte, still striking at 54, has maintained a three-decade friendship with Sir Tom, who has chalked up more than 100 million in record sales and still has swooning female fans hurling underwear at him on stage.
She first met Jones as a naive, 18-year-old US virgin and was seduced by him after a Florida concert in 1979.
Now married to an Oxford-educated lawyer and living in a £1.5 million Los Angeles ranch, Charlotte has hoarded scrapbooks packed with mementoes from the three years she spent as his mistress. He finally dumped her after she confided to his publicist that she was anti-abortion and would keep the singer’s baby if she became pregnant.
Before that, she says, Sir Tom was relaxed about who knew of their relationship. In fact, she learned that his son Mark often helped procure women for his famous father.
Childhood sweethearts: Sir Tom married Linda – pictured together in the 70s – when they were just 16
‘I met Tom’s mum, dad, sister and, of course, Mark,’ Charlotte said. ‘Tom told me his mother knew about his girlfriends and Mark was sharing a suite with his father the night we were first intimate. It was Mark who helped set up our dates.
‘There was nothing secretive about our relationship.
‘We walked into a disco one night and a man shouted: “Is that your wife?” and Tom said “No”. Then the guy yelled “Is that your woman?” and he smiled and said “Yes.” ’
By his own admission, Tom Jones slept with more than 250 women a year at the peak of his fame.
His dalliances with glamorous stars such as former Miss World Marjorie Wallace, Mary Wilson from The Supremes and model Katherine Berkery – with whom he has a son Jonathan – are legendary.
Yet, according to Charlotte, Jones’s wife Linda ignored her husband’s behaviour. Linda and Sir Tom, born just streets apart in Pontypridd, South Wales, married when both were 16 and she was pregnant with Mark. She always shunned the limelight and has become something of a recluse.
Charlotte was a model and actress when she met Tom. Since then, she has studied for two masters degrees, become a broadcaster and politician and written on racism and pornography. But although she is a much-respected campaigner in America, among Charlotte’s treasured possessions are a host of photographs of her with Tom. She has even kept a receipt for a gold and diamond Welsh dragon ring she had made for him and which he still wears.
Lothario: By his own admission, Sir Tom slept with 250 women at the height of his fame – but Charlotte, his mistress for three years, says Linda ignored her husband’s behaviour
‘I first saw Tom on TV when I was nine and had a crush on him then,’ she says with a smile. ‘But I didn’t meet him until I was invited backstage after a concert in Florida in 1979.’
Sir Tom’s modus operandi, she reveals, was to flirt with women from the stage and then have a member of his entourage approach them after the show and invite them back to his dressing room.
It was at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Lauderdale that John Moran, Jones’s then publicist, approached Charlotte, then known by her childhood nickname Missy.
‘I was still in my seat when a man with a sleazy casting couch air about him squatted down in front of me and said, “You want to go backstage?”
‘He led me into a room with a velvety couch and a bar.
‘Tom had on a bright blue tracksuit and blue clogs. I giggled because, minutes before, he’d been on stage looking 𝑠e𝑥y and now he looked odd.
‘Tom said: “Would you like to have dinner?” and I said “Sure.” ’
The pair, together with Jones’s entourage – his son, publicist and the warm-up comic – ended up at Studio 51 in Fort Lauderdale.
‘We had Dom Perignon,’ Charlotte recalls. ‘I was panicking because I knew I had to make a decision about whether to have 𝑠e𝑥. I was 18 and still a virgin.’
Later, back in Tom’s suite at the Executive House Hotel, Jones’s son Mark nibbled grapes while his father chatted up Charlotte.
Adoring: Charlotte had been a fan of Sir Tom since she first saw him on the television aged nine
‘Then they both start walking towards their own rooms on either side of the living room, and Tom said, “Are you going to stay tonight?” He was incredibly sweet. Mark went into his bedroom and I went into Tom’s. Inside, I told him it was my first time, and he held my hand and said, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” He was a real gentleman.’
They ended up spending the next day and night together. ‘What impressed me was that he was well-read and self-educated,’ says Charlotte. ‘We discussed racism and equality. He had a black, all-girl back-up band called The Blossoms, and when some idiot made a racist remark in his dressing room one night he threw them out.
‘We talked for hours about Elvis. Tom was very anti-drugs. He said Elvis would never let him leave and wanted him to hang out and party, and he never wanted to because he had to perform the next day.’
Tom liked a quiet life. The pair would meet every two or three months, when Jones was on tour in America and Linda was at home in Los Angeles.
‘We would be together for 24 hours. We would go to bed at 8am, get up at 4pm and we would sit there in dressing gowns eating breakfast at 4pm. His entourage would be there. Mark would sit with us. I was no secret.
‘Mark would arrange our dates. It was in the days before mobile phones, so he would call my dorm room at university and invite me to the next show.’
Off-stage, Jones would watch his favourite TV series – Fantasy Island and National Geographic nature programmes – and listen to endless English comedy records. He travelled with a dartboard, always set up in his dressing room.
‘When he wasn’t performing he led a pretty mundane life,’ says Charlotte. ‘He rarely went out. There would be sound checks and then the shows and then we’d have dinner, normally steak or chicken. He liked to drink Dom Perignon but never to excess. I never saw any drugs.’
Tom, she says, never spoke disrespectfully of his wife. ‘We did have a conversation about it the first night and he indicated he had an open marriage. He said it was more of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” relationship.
‘Linda knew and didn’t choose to make an issue of it. She wanted to stay married to him, that was basically what he told me in a nutshell.
‘Tom told me his mum knew he was dating. Mark, who was his manager, liked me. My father had ten or 15 cars and I’d turn up in these different Mercedes and Mark would be excited because he’d borrow my cars. He is only three years older than me. Tom is quite possessive and was always worried I would fancy Mark. But I adored Tom.’
Still close: Now married to an Oxford-educated lawyer, Charlotte and Sir Tom have stayed friends, last meeting up five years ago in Los Vegas at the MGM Grand (pictured)
She said the singer was ‘insecure’ about his looks and bemused by his 𝑠e𝑥 bomb image. ‘People think he’s arrogant. He’s not,’ she says. ‘He is down to earth. I’ve heard he namedrops on The Voice, but when I was with him, he was happy hanging with me and his entourage.’
Charlotte says she ‘assumed’ Jones had other girlfriends despite falling madly in love with him. ‘I had low self-esteem. I was totally in love with him. But, to his credit, he never lied to me. He never said he’d leave his wife. He never told me he loved me, even though he treated me like a princess. He gave me lingering massages for hours.
‘I brought all this 𝑠e𝑥y lingerie. I left the suitcase in the bedroom and went into the suite’s living room. Tom disappeared. He unpacked my suitcase and hung all the lingerie up on hangers. I went into the bedroom and was so embarrassed.’
Sexually, she says, he was ‘passionate but normal’. ‘He’s not into any kinky stuff. One night he came off stage to the applause and cheers. He was his 𝑠e𝑥y self: sweat, adrenaline, drenched shirt. He pushed me into a tight little bathroom. It was romantic, sensual, exciting and perfect.
‘Another time, I ambushed him with a can of cream in the bedroom. It was fun.’
Tom was always guided by his team. Charlotte claims their affair ended after John Moran asked her: ‘What would you do if you got pregnant?’ Despite using birth control during her time with the star, Charlotte replied she was anti-abortion.
The next day she was dumped – not by Jones but by Moran.
Reality TV star: Sir Tom has gone on to find even more success – this time as a TV judge in The Voice
‘He told me Tom couldn’t see me any more. We were at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. John pulled me aside and said, “About our conversation last night… Tom can’t see you any more. Sorry. I can’t allow you backstage and don’t try calling the suite.”
‘I was in disbelief and in floods of tears. I was devastated.’
Although she made several efforts to contact Tom, her messages went unanswered and she didn’t meet him again until a year later.
‘He tried to get back with me for a night but I had another boyfriend by then so told him no,’ she explains.
The couple have remained friends, however, and Charlotte has often attended Sir Tom’s concerts and been invited backstage. ‘I consider him a friend and I believe he considers me a friend too,’ she says.
Charlotte has now included her Tom Jones ‘adventure’ in her memoirs Rebel In High Heels published this week. ‘I never talked about it before but I wanted to do an honest story of my life and he was a big part of it,’ she explains.
They last met in 2010 in Vegas. Charlotte says: ‘I’d given him a $2,500 Welsh dragon ring when we were together, which I had made using diamonds from my grandmother’s watch. He told me he’d seen Catherine Zeta-Jones the night before and she had been admiring it. He told me he still wears it all the time.’
Pulling out a photograph of a greying Jones hugging her backstage, she says: ‘He taught me so much and I will forever be grateful. He was a gentleman and I feel honoured to have known the real Tom behind all the glitz and glamour. I don’t think I – or any woman – was ever any threat to his marriage.’
These days, Sir Tom and Linda live in a gated community in Los Angeles and ‘Lady Linda’ rarely ventures out. It has been reported she suffers from agoraphobia. In a recent interview, the singer said: ‘It’s as if I have two different parts of my life. On the road, where I do concerts and what have you, and at home where I’m with her. But, you know, I don’t mind. Actually, in many ways, it rather suits me.’