Sir Tom Jones married Melinda Rose Woodward, known as Lady Linda, in 1957. The pair had a rocky marriage – following the Sex Bomb singer’s admission to sleeping with up to 250 women a year during the height of his career – but he remained devoted to her until her death. Linda died on April 10, 2016, following a short battle with lung cancer – but now, in the wake of her death, her shocking revelation about how she never felt good enough for her husband has resurfaced.
Tom and Linda met at a young age and were childhood sweethearts.
Despite his confessed numerous affairs, Tom’s love for his wife appeared sincere and long-lasting.
Tom wrote in his autobiography he had “never had that feeling for anyone else, I don’t think you can fall in love more than once”.
Despite the singer’s notoriety and flourishing fame Linda remained out of the public eye and once confided in a friend she “never felt good enough to be Tom’s wife”.
Tom’s numerous conquests as he toured the world may have had something to do with Linda feeling this way.
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Two of the Its Not Unusual singer’s more public affairs included a two-year fling with Mary Wilson of The Supremes and another with then Miss World Marjorie Wallace.
As well as this, his dalliances with female fans were legendary, with many throwing their knickers on stage as he performed to catch his eye.
The star reportedly had two dressing rooms when on tour – one, “the workbench”, for meeting with groupies.
Sir Tom, now 78, once claimed of his affairs: “I have never kept count.”
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But when Linda eventually found out about his affair with Miss World Marjorie, then 19, she was understandably angry.
Sir Tom said of the moment she discovered his infidelity: “I stood there and took it. She chinned me. I said, ‘Go ahead’. She punched and shouted.”
The singer also explained they had come to an arrangement in the late 1960s after Linda stopped going on the road with him. Of his extracurricular activities, Tom said: “She doesn’t ask.”
In one interview, Sir Tom’s biographer Sean Smith described the singer’s marriage, saying whilst the couple had been married more than 50 years, they had probably only spent 10 years in each other’s company.
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He added: “Linda has her housekeeper and gardener, and sees more of them than anyone else.
“She hasn’t flown in years and is unlikely to come back to the UK again.
“When Tom’s in LA they are a retired couple in their 70s, having gentle drives and enjoying reading in the sun and TV, like a million other pensioners.”
While Sir Tom has said: “I still love my wife. The longer you’re married, it changes. It’s no longer a sex thing. There’s got to be more than that for it to last.
“We both came from a working-class background, we both came from the same place, so we’re not like two foreign people having to explain to the other what their childhood was like.
“We grew up together. To walk away from that would be terrible.”
When asked why his affairs were left out of his biography, Tom said: “I don’t think it’s important.
“It’s not what has made me. It’s not what got you there.”
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