Tom Jones Knew My Father

This is a work of fiction. It is not about Sir Tom Jones, nor is it endorsed by Sir Tom Jones, and he is not affiliated with it in anyway. The title is a pun on a song, popular in Wales, ’Lloyd George Knew My Father’, set to the tune of ’Onward Christian Soldiers’ - and of course to Fielding’s ’The History of Tom Jones’ - and equally bawdy irreverent story. Tom Jones Knew My Father is a bawdy, irreverent transatlantic satire about wealthy Californians, Welsh rogues, Irish conmen-and the American longing to claim an exciting, romantic heritage, no matter how tenuous the connection.From Beverly Hills to South Wales, Galway to the Mojave Desert, this subversive black comedy follows a riotous cast of cultural impostors, fraudulent opportunists and deluded idealists as they lose themselves in sexual misadventures, pseudo-mysticism and ancient mythology.As the money-fueled search for ancestral roots gathers momentum, misunderstandings spiral into marital breakdowns, scams and confidence tricks. The result is a hilarious collision of cultures in which good intentions prove every bit as dangerous as bad ones.Fast-paced, anarchic and gleefully politically incorrect, Tom Jones Knew My Father is a comedy of identity, delusion and the irresistible human urge to reinvent the past. In early-1990s Beverly Hills, wealthy Idris Binney envies her friend Claudia’s obsessive celebration of her Irish ancestry. When Idris learns that her first name is Welsh, she immediately reinvents herself as a dispossessed Celt and hires art historian Phillipa Jones to trace her roots.A newspaper advertisement leads them to the Binney family of Pontypridd and the opportunistic young Llywelyn. Idris mistakes his ignorance of Welsh history for evidence of English oppression, appoints him her guide and begins an affair with him. After touring Wales in search of mystical experiences, she purchases a prehistoric dolmen, ships it to California and takes Llywelyn home.Idris’s elderly husband, Hal, recognises the affair but becomes convinced that Llywelyn is a reincarnated Welsh warrior. He finances a supposed campaign for Welsh independence and returns to Wales, where a staged attack beside an American airbase goes disastrously wrong. Hal charges into battle with an Uzi and is shot dead.Meanwhile, Claudia’s supposedly authentic Irish thatchers, Frank and Eamon Dare, are incompetent conmen. Mistaken for IRA operatives, they steal fundraising money, lose much of it in a drunken rare-stamp fiasco and flee genuine terrorists-only to be conscripted into the Egyptian Army. Claudia’s husband, Ethan, suffers a religious breakdown and escapes to Israel, while botched surgery leaves Claudia with grotesquely enlarged breasts.During a solstice ritual in Death Valley, Idris reconstructs her stolen dolmen and sacrifices a goat. The monument mysteriously produces torrential rain, and a flash flood strands Idris and Claudia beneath it, shivering in goat skins. Idris has finally become the ancient Celt she imagined-and remains profoundly dissatisfied. 6