UK CRIME:

The announcement that the Welsh Rugby Union will ban the singing of a popular hit by veteran UK entertainer Sir Tom Jones (at right) has led to the Welsh-born singer’s arrest and appearance in court on a range of serious charges.

Sir Tom, 82, was arrested at his London home this morning (main picture) and charged with inciting stalking and domestic violence, promoting coercive control, and being an accessory to murder.

He appeared in the Central London Magistrates’ Court where Detective Chief Inspector  Stan Verahope (below) said Scotland Yard had acted after reading news of the WRU decision and listening to lyrics of Sir Tom’s big hit from the late 1960s, Delilah.

DCI Verahope read out to the court several verses of Delilah saying the song began by placing an unnamed narrator – embodied by Sir Tom as the song’s performer ­– in close proximity to his girlfriend and/or wife’s abode where she is in the company of another man:

I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window

I saw the flickering shadows of love on her blind

She was my woman

As she deceived me, I watched and went out of my mind

“We allege that the lyrics indicate that the narrator, in this case Sir Tom, has presumed his girlfriend or wife is engaged in intimate relations with another man, although there is no proof of such action on her part, only ‘flickering shadows’ on a blind of unknown structure and texture,” DCI Verahope said.

“The narrator further asserts that the actions of the woman constitute deception of a level sufficient to cause him to lose all sense of rational action.”

He said the following lyrics constituted a confession of inflicting deliberate and premeditated violence of such strength as to cause the woman’s death:

At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting

I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door

She stood there laughing

I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.

“We have only the narrator’s word that the soon-to-be deceased woman provoked him to kill her merely by laughing at him,” DCI Verahope told the court.

“We further submit that any such action on her part would not constitute an explanation let alone a defence for such extreme violence.”

Sir Tom’s defence barrister Hermione Rumpole (below) argued that the charges should be withdrawn because the events Sir Tom had sung about were commonplace.

“It’s not unusual, to be mad with anyone. It’s not unusual, to be sad with anyone,” Ms Rumpole said.

“It happens every day, no matter what you say. You find it happens all the time.

“Love will never do, what you want it to,” she concluded.

Magistrate Bert Engeldink-Humper (below) was unconvinced and committed Sir Tom for trial in the Crown Court on a date to be fixed and refused bail.