Sir Tom Jones: ‘The knicker throwing started in the Copacabana in New York in 1968’

The singer, 80, on enthusiastic audiences, singing Sex Bomb at 90, meeting a young Michael Jackson and losing the love of his life

I've been singing since I was a kid growing up in Pontypridd in South Wales. I would sing in school. I would sing in chapel. Any chance I got to get up and sing, I took it.

I was quarantined for two years with tuberculosis. I was in hospital or confined to my house from 1952 to 1954, from the age of 12 to 14. There was an old gas lamp-post at the end of the street I could see out of the window from our house where the local kids used to gather. I used to think, When I can walk to the lamp-post again, I'll never complain about anything as long as I live." I still see that lamp-post in my mind and think, What am I complaining about?"