Just how old is Tom Jones? The subject is being discussed by his fellow judges on The Voice, will.i.am and Danny O’Donoghue, amid much whistling and a fair bit of swearing.
Danny reckons he’s 73 (in fact, he’s 72), ten years older than Danny’s dad was when he died, which in turn prompts Will to work out that, since his mother gave birth to him when she was just 20, Tom’s almost old enough to be his grandfather. Phew!
His face suggests he’s never really thought of this before. ‘I mean, if somebody’s grandfather came in the room and started singing Sex Bomb, you’d think, “Uuugh, that’s gross!” But he does it. It’s awesome. He’s ageless.’
The Voice is back for a second series and this time round they are doing things differently
It’s fair to say the legendary Tom Jones has made quite an impression on these two since they started working together on the first series of the talent contest this time last year.
Basically, they’d both like to be Tom Jones and quickly fall into doing impersonations as they recount their conversations with the great man.
Since Will’s a short black American and Danny’s a lanky Irishman with skin the colour of milk, this is surreal to start with. Then again, so are their conversations with Mr Jones, it seems.
‘What do we talk about? Oh you don’t talk to Tom Jones. You just shut up and listen,’ admits Danny, 32. ‘If you’re lucky he starts singing to you. The best bit is when you’re drinking with him, and it’s at that stage of the night when hotel staff are putting the breakfast things out and he’s singing lines from songs. It’s like poetry.’
‘I find myself interviewing him,’ admits Will, 38. ‘We sit there and I say, “Tell me about being backstage with Little Richard. Tell me about James Brown. Were there fights?” I mean, he was up there with all the dudes. I remember once asking him if he’d seen much racial tension and he said, “Damn right!” People had only heard his music and assumed, with the voice and the name Jones, that he was black.
'He didn’t know what sort of reception he was going to get when they realised he wasn’t.’
The more they talk, the more you wish the BBC had plonked some cameras in the bar when the judges were off-duty while they were filming The Voice.
Can we assume the great Mr Jones can outdrink them both, despite his grandfatherly age? ‘Oh yes,’ says Danny.
The one unique selling point that set the show apart from its competitors was the fact that the judges couldn't see the acts
‘We must have had about four drinking sessions during the last series, and I’m talking drinking sessions – four or five bottles rather than a glass of champagne.’ So where was the fourth judge, Jessie J, when all this was going on? ‘Jessie doesn’t drink,’ he says. ‘She looks after her voice.’
The Voice was launched this time last year in a blaze of publicity, the BBC’s £22 million rival to big primetime crowd-pullers like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
Its unique selling point – or ‘gimmick’ according to its critics – was that the four judges weren’t allowed to see the contestants before they voted whether to let them go through to the next round.
While the capacious swivel-chairs, which swung round when the judges’ appetites were whetted enough, might have gained their own army of fans, the programme itself didn’t live up to the initial hype. More than 10 million people tuned in to the first episode, but over the coming weeks figures dropped as low as 4.5 million.
The complaint was that the programme eventually became too similar to the other types of talent shows out there.
So do Will and Danny feel it flopped? Clearly not. ‘Maybe figures went down but that’s what happens with all these shows. People do lose interest,’ says Will.
‘It happened with America’s Got Talent. It happens with X Factor. A lot of things come into play. The finals took place in the summer when a lot of people were on holiday. Actually, our final was on the hottest day of the year.’
Danny looks forlorn. ‘We were the only people in the country wishing for rain,’ he admits. ‘Well us and taxi drivers.’ So they were pleased with how the show went? ‘Absolutely. The fact that we went up against a big juggernaut like Britain’s Got Talent and gave viewers something different – I think it was great. And remember, we’re not an entertainment show. We aren’t a circus. We don’t have dancing dogs. We have real singers who are trying to make it in the industry.’
And this year there’s a dramatic new twist designed to give it more oomph, they reveal. ‘The bosses have looked at how things can be improved and come up with a new element called The Steal,’ says Danny. ‘The judges can steal other judges’ acts they want to save – which is what happens in the real music industry. When a judge rejects an act, the rest of us are allowed to take them on. In this business, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’
Danny’s young protégée, the aristocratic Bo Bruce, is also about to bring out a new album while runner-up Tyler James also has a record deal. What is certain is that the careers of the less well-known judges have had a huge boost.
With Danny, singer and songwriter with band The Script, the joke was that no one knew who he was. His nickname became Danny ‘I Dunno Who’. Was he offended when the likes of James Corden took the mick? ‘I found it funny. I mean, it was true. People might have known the band’s music, but not so much me. Who was this guy sitting next to Tom Jones?’
Danny fast became the heart-throb of the line-up, though. Is it nice getting all that female attention? ‘No, it’s awful,’ says the Irishman, always ready with a quip. There were rumours, strenuously denied, that he had become romantically involved with Bo Bruce.
This caused raised eyebrows, since he was supposedly still with his girlfriend, model Irma Mali. He wants to clarify that, though, claiming the relationship was over months before filming of The Voice started. Is he uncomfortable with the speculation about his private life?
‘If you’re going to put yourself in the limelight, then you have to expect it,’ he says. ‘But my life is genuinely an open book. People don’t need to read about it in the press. It’s all in my songs.’
It wouldn’t have been surprising if any of the four judges had dropped out after the first series but all are back, even Jessie. Explaining her U-turn she said, ‘The Voice very kindly moved some of the dates because I really wanted to do it. I always wanted to do it, so we made it work.
'The only reason I couldn’t was because of the dates. And I’m glad I did – I’m back in my chair bigging it up. The auditions were stronger this year, I think we had far better people. Sometimes I have to remember I’m on TV though, and calm down when I’m in the chair. Last year I was so shocked at some of the decisions I couldn’t hide it on my face.’
It doesn’t sound as if Danny and Will played hard to get. ‘We looked at each other on the last day of filming the first series and said, “Are you in for the next one?” and agreed that we were. They hadn’t even asked us to do it yet,’ admits Danny.
If no one knew who Danny was, not many more knew will.i.am either. But now he’s in with everyone who matters. The Black Eyed Peas frontman had a comprehensive music history.
With seven Grammys and three World Music Awards to his name, he’d also become a go-to producer, working with Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber and U2. Then things got just a tad bizarre. He became Cheryl Cole’s manager, which was odd enough, but also – through his fund-raising work – friends with Presidents Obama and Clinton.
During his time in the UK he’s now, somehow, added Prince Charles to his Christmas card list (‘I’m incredibly impressed with him. He doesn’t have to do the Prince’s Trust stuff. You can see he’s passionate about it. He isn’t someone who gives default answers or who’s in it for superficial reasons.’)
In conversation, will.i.am at first seems as kooky as they come, lurching from Tom Jones to Hurricane Katrina to his weird LA-type diet (he fasts for ten days ‘every season’, veering between eating nothing at all or ‘just soup and fruit’). It seems an odd sort of social butterfly life, but he’s also got the air of the class nerd. His monologues about digital technology and how we’ll all soon be printing our own shoes via 3D imaging are quite something to behold.
So is his wardrobe. Today he’s clad in over-sized gold glasses, à la Elton John, and a gold lamé cardigan, which takes a certain sort of character to carry off. So is he very cool, or very uncool? Or so uncool he’s cool? He laughs.
‘I can’t be pinned down. That’s the secret. At school I wasn’t the guy deemed the most popular, or the most likely to succeed. I was the space cadet. Literally. They wrote space cadet after my name in the register.’
His background is fascinating. He grew up the son of a single mother in a poor Mexican neighbourhood in Los Angeles; theirs was the only black family. His mother had his elder brother when she was 15 and Will when she was just 20 and training to be a nurse.
‘My grandmother must have been mad with her. Two kids – at 20! But she was the best mum anyone could have. She was strict, protective. She’d never let us out to play on the street with the other kids.’ There was never a father on the scene, but he says that never mattered. ‘There was no void. I never needed a dad because she was Dad too.’
It wouldn't have been surprising if any of the four judges had dropped out after the first series but all are back, even Jessie, and it looks set to be better than ever
It seems people never knew quite what to make of him – and he turned that to his advantage. ‘I learned how to mix with whoever at school.
'The white kids ate their lunch in the playground from a paper bag, the Latins and blacks were at the canteen with their food tickets, the Asians stood by their lockers and the Arabic kids were in the car park by their cars. Then there were the gay boys who hung out at drama class. I flitted between them all. I was the wanderer.’
He had a recording contract at 15 and may these days fly by private jet and have the ear of Presidents, but he also has the air of a man who still has his feet on the ground and retains a sense of humour. He jokes about how being rich is actually quite like being poor.
‘I don’t carry money now, just like I didn’t when I was poor because I didn’t have any. When you’re poor people give you things, like charity. And when you’re rich and famous, people give you things too.’
He shows me pictures of his mum at the White House during President Obama’s inauguration. ‘He arranged a private tour so she actually watched the whole thing from inside the White House. Obama said, “Thank you for raising your son the way you did”, which made her practically faint and mutter, “My son runs with some powerful people.”
'She told me she was right to ask my grandmother not to be angry when she got pregnant with me, because of what I might become. She calls me her little earth project and she said, “Thank you for choosing me to be your mum,” which is all wrong. I’m the lucky one.’
The Voice starts on Saturday 30 March on BBC1.
Source: Femail / Edited: DannyODonoghue.Net
