Tom Jones International

We were able to get an advance copy of this new TJ bio that will be published March 15 in the UK. Here’s our review:

According to the dust jacket, Arise Sir Tom Jones: The Biography by Gwen Russell is an “affectionate” portrait of Sir Tom. “It paints a complete portrait of one of Britain’s most talented men; a true national treasure.”

Russell says the book is “based on Tom’s own memories and recollections from famous friends, relatives and contemporaries.” These memories and recollections all come from previously pubished news articles and print, radio and TV interviews. Every quote is from another source — a source that gets no credit from this author. As far as we two careful readers could tell, she interviewed no one.

She dredges up all the dirt but unlike, say, Robin Eggar — author of another book about Tom that, beside this, reads like Shakespeare — she did not even attempt original work. Remember when you had to do a paper for school? You researched the information, put in your quotes and, in your footnotes and bibliograpy, told the teacher where you found all this. If you did what Ms. Russell did here, the teacher would have failed you.

Even as a professional Ms. Russell does not labor under the constraints you did as a schoolkid. She quotes and “recalls” with abandon and, if you’ve read anything about Tom Jones, you’ve read all this before. In the original sources.
But, compared to this, the original sources from which this material was lifted contained some modicum of accuracy. In this telling of his life, Tom Jones got married at 17 (not “WAS” married — which he was — but “GOT” married — which he didn’t). His mother-in-law’s name here was “Jean.” Les Reed spells his name “Reid.” Even the discography is wrong, citing Rescue Me as a “compilation” and getting the name of the Puppeteer song wrong.

Yes, people can make mistakes. But, in a slim volume (288 pages of pretty large type) the number of factual errors (oh, we forgot: Las Vegas is in the “Arizona desert?”) is egregious; inexcusable. She spells “Rhondda” as in “Rhondda Valley”) “Rhonda.” Russell persists in calling him — for some bizarre reason — “Tom the Voice.” She mixes up “Tommy Scott,” the lead singer of Space with “Tommy Scott,” Tom’s name with the Senators 30 years or so before the time she’s writing about. That’s one confusing sentence, let us tell you.

This author has written a book about British racing commentator Jeremy Clarkson that outraged his fans. She has one due out May 15 called Arise Sir David Beckham. Fan reviewers of the Clarkson book on Amazon UK each gave it one out of five stars. “Utter rubbish” in the words of one.

This book does not contain even an iota of original thought, rehashes a old gossip whilst shedding no new light on it. Even the photos are available pretty much anywhere. As bad as other bios of Tom have been, at least those showed the authors tried to do original work and interview sources.

Amazon UK, discounts this book to £11.87 (23.22 USD; 26.98 CAD; 17.69 Euros). Better to take that amount of money and donate it in Sir Tom’s name to charity and reread older books and articles about him.

Please don’t buy this book. It’s so bad on every level and paying for this stuff only encourages the production of more of it. If we can figure out how to lend our copy to any of you who want to read it, we will. We were fortunate, we didn’t pay for it. (And we don’t think that company will send us more books to review, do you?)

—Ellen & Ursula