By Clemmie Moodie

Last updated at 09:09 13 September 2006

After having countless affairs during their 49-year marriage, Sir Tom Jones could hardly argue that he didn't have it coming.

He has revealed that his womanising ways once caused his long-suffering wife to beat him black and blue.

Linda, who has stood by the 66-year-old singer throughout decades of well-publicised philandering, snapped after reading about one infidelity in a newspaper, he admitted.

Speaking in an interview on American television, Sir Tom said: "She beat me up physically one night.

"I said, 'Look, I'm sorry,' and she'd got the newspaper there.

"She said, 'You…' I said, 'There it is [pointing at chin],' and she went 'Bang!' And then started kicking me."

Sir Tom did not say when the battering took place, or which affair caused his wife to crack. But there is no shortage of candidates.

The Welsh 'Sex Bomb' recently admitted that he has lost count of the number of women he has slept with - despite being apparently happily married to his childhood sweetheart for nearly half a century.

In 1999, shortly after it was announced that the hipgyrating singer would be made an OBE, he had a fling with a 21-year-old Stringfellows lapdancer.

"It was encore after encore," Christine James later kissed-and-told.

Another ill-fated fling in 1989 resulted in Katherine Berkery, then a 24-year-old model, having his illegitimate child.

Sir Tom, who was knighted earlier this year, denied paternity but a DNA test proved he was the father of her son, Jonathan.

In another hugely embarrassing episode, Las Vegas student Cindy Montgomerie let slip that Sir Tom liked to dip his private parts in Listerine mouthwash.

His other conquests have included Mary Wilson of The Supremes and former Miss World Marjorie Wallace.

Sir Tom's latest admission belies the 'doormat' reputation his wife has acquired over the past 49 years.

In the singer's official biography, author Robin Eggar claims that Linda led a 'lonely, timid existence' and rarely ventured out of the couple's Bel Air mansion.

Her reclusive lifestyle saw her turn to alcohol and during an infamous argument - after Jones had invited a couple of friends around unannounced to play snooker - she threw empty bottles of vodka at his head.

Despite this, she has always publicly defended her husband. After his fling with Miss Berkery hit the headlines, Linda said: "I love Tom just as much as I ever did, and he loves me. And nothing that these women throw at him will ever destroy that love."

In his television interview, Sir Tom revealed that he, perhaps wisely, decided not to fight back under his wife's onslaught.

"I took it," he said.