Sir Tom Jones has revealed how his late wife Linda would have been particularly proud of his return on The Voice UK. The Welsh singer recently returned to the judging panel when the series moved to ITV - just one year after he was axed from the show and replaced by Boy George. Speaking about the ordeal on Tuesday's This Morning, Tom recalled: "They said they were not renewing my contract just a couple of days before. I thought, why did they not tell me sooner than that?'
When host Phillip Schofield asked him whether his wife was "furious" with the axe, the 76-year-old replied: "Yes, she couldn't understand it. She passed away before I came back. She would have been very happy because she enjoyed it." Sir Tom also explained how he would take recordings of The Voice to his wife, who lived in Los Angeles. "I used to take the DVDs back to Los Angeles and play them for her, because it wasn't on the television. She loved it and my sister is also out there, and we used to watch the shows [together]," he said.
© Photo: ITVSir Tom Jones returned to The Voice UK when the show moved to ITV this year
STORY: Sir Tom credits music for 'saving' him after death of his wife
Last month, the Delilah hitmaker opened up to chat show host Lorraine about his wife's devastating death. "When she passed it was so sudden, in April, she found out she had lung cancer and it was too late, it was terminal, and it was very, very quick," he said. "So it really knocked the stuffing out of me because we'd been together since we were kids you see. We were kids together. And she has always been there, so it was a strange thing." His wife of 59 years died in April last year after a short battle with cancer.
© Photo: Getty ImagesTom Jones revealed his late wife Linda would have been happy with his return
GALLERY: The Voice judges look unrecognisable in these flashback pictures
He continued: "I didn't know whether I would be able to carry on and I just didn't know but, you know, my family, and my son and my daughter-in-law who are also my managers and Mark my son, he said, 'Look if you don't sing, you'll die, you'll just shrivel up and die, do you want to do that?' I said, 'No not really'. So we tried it, we sort of broke-in easily. I got some musicians together and we tried some songs out because I didn't know whether I could sing and then we did." Sir Tom rose to fame in the 1960s, releasing popular tunes such as It's Not Unusual, Green, Green Grass of Home and Delilah. He scored his first UK number one in 1965 for It's Not Unusual and went on to sell more than 100 million records around the world throughout his career.
