Tom Jones is growing old gracefully (at last)

Earlier this month, record company executives mocked his new album. Here Tom Jones puts his side of the story as he discusses baring his soul and finding a new voice. So please, no more knickers
Tom Jones circa 1968
Tom Jones circa 1968
TERRY O’NEILL/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

It all went wrong for Sir Tom Jones quite a long time ago, and he knew it. He just couldn’t see a way out. “We were worried,” he says, by way of example, “when we did Sex Bomb. We thought, this could bite us on the arse. We thought, you know, we might be digging our own grave here, doing something like this. That’s why I changed the words.”

The first draft, apparently, was first-person. “It was too much,” he says, wide, worried eyes locked on to mine. “ ‘I’m a sex bomb? I can turn you on?’ No. So, I said, ‘Look, let’s put it in the second person. You’re a sex bomb. You can turn me on.’ Because you’ve got to, haven’t