close your eyes, because then you are trapping the song and keeping it prisoner. ‘Let people see what you are singing about,’ said George.
Tom had an edge, even as a youngster in short trousers. He didn’t just sing a song; he performed it with verve and passion. In 1946, when Tommy was six, the Oscar-winning film The Jolson Story was released. The biopic, starring Larry Parks, told the life of the star who, from humble origins, became the most famous entertainer in the world. Fortunately, it glossed over the singer’s marital problems brought about by his inveterate womanising.
Tom was transfixed when he saw the film with his parents at the Cecil Cinema in Fothergill Street, Treforest. He recalled, ‘I thought Al Jolson was great, because he was a great entertainer.’ Back at the house in Laura Street, he would stand in front of a mirror and practise the famous Jolson gestures and hand movements, so he could impress his audience the next time he gave a performance in the lounge. He wanted to be like Jolson, because ‘he’s moving and singing.’
Performing in front of an audience for Tom was like swimming for other youngsters: after you have overcome an initial fear of the water, it becomes second nature. Tom wasn’t overawed when Uncle Edwin stood him on a chair to sing to a crowded pub or when his mother showed him off at the weekly meetings of the Treforest Women’s Guild, which met in a small hall at the top of Stow Hill, a short, lung-busting walk from home.
Little Tommy was, in fact, a big show-off. Looking back at his childhood self, Tom admitted, ‘It was my strength. A lot of boys in school were great rugby players or football players. But I was lucky that I had this voice. It gave me confidence.’ In that regard, Tom took after his vivacious mother. His cousin Margaret, who was very close to Tom growing up, used to tell him that he would always have another career if his voice ever gave out: ‘He has my auntie’s personality. She was a very natural woman and would be the life and soul of the party. Tom was the same. I told him he would make a marvellous stand-up comedian.’
The one member of clan Woodward who was a reluctant singer was his father. Tom recalled, ‘My father was a shy man. But he could sing if he had had enough beer.’ His mother had no such inhibitions, however, and would happily burst into song. Unfortunately, she couldn’t match her husband as a singer, although her son says she could just about hold a tune.
Tom’s universe was very small when he was growing up. He usually says he hails from Pontypridd, but he is a Treforest boy through and through. Until he left school, his entire life was acted out within a few hundred yards of his home, and even then his first job was only a five-minute stroll away. His mother’s sister, Auntie Lena, lived with her husband, Albert Jones, in adjoining Tower Street, so his first cousins were so close you could almost hear the kettle going on. His best friends, Brian Blackler and Dai Perry, were within shouting distance and he never had more than a ten-minute walk to school.
The boy was called Tommy at home and among family to avoid confusion with his father, but his school friends always knew him as Tom, or sometimes Woodsie. The local children would never have dreamed of referring to Tom senior as anything other than Mr Woodward. Proper respect for your elders was very important in this small, insulated mining community. One story in particular illustrates this. When both her children were of school age, Freda took a job in a local factory to bring in some much needed extra cash. One day she and her husband were queuing for the cinema when a boy shouted out to them, ‘Hello, Freda.’ Tom senior was enraged by the impertinence and wanted to know who he was. Freda said he was just a young lad who worked at the factory. Her husband was incandescent. ‘You’re not going to the factory any more,’ he insisted. ‘If they can’t call you Mrs Woodward, then you don’t work there!’
Freda never took another full-time job, but she was the woman local families called on when someone died. She would be asked to lay out the body, which involved dressing the deceased so they looked their best for the funeral. It was a sign of the regard in which she was held that she was trusted with such a significant task.
Tom was decidedly spoiled and, perhaps because he was indulged, he was slightly on the chubby side. His sister was six years older, so he was very much the little one in the family. Coincidentally, his mother was the youngest sibling, eleven years younger than Lena, and the baby of her family too. The Woodwards were relatively better off than many in the area, because they were a household of only four. Both Tom’s mother and father were one of six children, so there were lots of cousins living in Treforest. Lena and Albert alone had seven children.
As far as young Tom was concerned, it was entirely normal to grow up with such an extended family in close proximity. He loved it and has always stressed that family is of paramount importance to him. It would come as no surprise to those who knew him well that his immediate family would later live within five minutes of him in Los Angeles or that he made sure his cousins were always welcome there.
Tom enjoyed a traditional and idyllic childhood, despite the dismal landscape of an impoverished area. The house in Laura Street was an end of terrace and bigger than some of the others in the street. Freda liked the decoration to be bright and colourful – a cheerful place for her family. ‘It was a beautiful home,’ recalls Cousin Margaret. ‘Auntie Freda was very house-proud but she would always give you a welcome.’ Like so many housewives then, she would invariably have a pie or a tray of Welsh cakes baking in the oven of her kitchen on the lower ground floor and the smell would waft enticingly up the stairs.
A coal fire kept the house warm. Tom and the other boys in the neighbourhood used to enjoy helping when the coalman came round with a delivery. He would lift up a round, steel plate in the pavement and tip the coal in. The boys would then push the coal down the hole, so it would land in the room on the bottom floor known as the coal house.
Visitors always came to the back door, which was never locked. The house had no bathroom, but hanging on a hook outside was the small tin bath that Freda would fetch down every night and put in the scullery across the hall, ready to fill with hot water so her husband could scrub himself clean of the coal dust and grime every evening.
On Tom’s birth certificate, his father listed his occupation not as miner but as Assistant Colliery Repairer (below ground). The work was just as dirty, dark and forbidding as digging the seam. It was also hugely important, because it involved repairing the wooden joists that kept the tunnels from collapsing, preventing calamitous results.
The daily rituals in the Woodward home never changed and the roles that his mother and father had within the household had a profound effect on young Tom’s outlook on life and the development of a set of values that many would see as old fashioned. His father worked hard to provide for his family, and his wife was equally diligent in making sure his house was spotless, his children were clean and tidy and he was cared for from the moment she could hear the click of the garden gate announcing he was back. Tom observed, ‘Most of my values have been formed from that working-class environment. They were good people.’
Freda was always up first to light the fire, make breakfast, lay out Tom senior’s work clothes and prepare his packed lunch ready for his journey over the mountain to the colliery. He usually walked with Brian Blackler’s father, Cliff, and the many other miners from Treforest. While he spent the day with a pickaxe in his hand, Freda would make sure the children were safely at school before beginning her daily tasks of shopping, baking and cleaning. She took particular care in polishing the horse brasses that were dotted about the best room and were her pride and joy.
At the end of a strenuous day, a miner needed his hot meal. Freda always had her husband’s tea ready on the kitchen table for him to enjoy as soon as he had washed his hands. Tom and Sheila, hair brushed and tidy, were there to welcome their father home.
After he had eaten, he would take his bath. It was far too small for a grown man. Tom described his father’s routine: ‘He would have to kneel on the floor first of all and
