The destitute son Tom Jones refuses even to acknowledge

His father is worth £155m. He sleeps on the floor of a homeless hostel. Now Jon Jones says: I don’t want Dad’s money — just his love before it’s too late

WHeN Sir Tom Jones announced that he had sold his £6.5 million Hollywood mansion last week, fans pored over the photographs of his lavish former home. Filled with life-size animal sculptures, leopard-print carpets and chairs, plus his gold four-poster bed, the house also features balconies overlooking Los Angeles and the distant mountains, and perfectly manicured gardens resplendent with fountains and a swimming pool.

The legendary Welsh singer no longer felt ‘comfortable’ there after the death of his wife, Linda, from lung cancer in 2016 and said he had sold the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom property she had lovingly decorated — along with all the furniture and fittings — to return to the green, green grass of home.

His poignant announcement was met with bemusement by the star’s younger son, Jonathan Berkery, who sleeps on a mat in a New Jersey homeless shelter and considers himself lucky if he can grab one of the blankets thrown at the 30-plus men who bed down beside him each night.

The 29-year-old aspiring musician, who goes by the name of Jon Jones, has never met Sir Tom or received so much as a telephone call, a Christmas present or a birthday card, and yet he never gives up hope that the 77-year-old pop star might one day agree to see him.

‘I’d like to talk to him about normal stuff, like: “How’s your life been? This is mine,”’ says Jon. ‘I want to see him before it’s too late.’

As things stand, however, his yearning to meet his biological father is but a distant dream.

SIr Tom, who returned to our TV screens last week as a judge on the latest series of The Voice UK, did not even publicly admit to having a second child until 2008, despite DNA tests proving his paternity.

The former coal miner from Pontypridd in South Wales was 47 when he had a three-day fling with aspiring model Katherine Berkery, 24, after meeting her in a New York nightclub in October 1987.

The married star invited her to watch his show the next night, after which they had dinner together before heading back to his suite at Manhattan’s ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Three months later, after Katherine had discovered she was pregnant, she phoned his office only to be told by an aide: ‘That’s showbiz, darling. Do what you have to do.’

Baby Jonathan was born on June 27, 1988, but Sir Tom, who has admitted sleeping with up to 250 women a year at the height of his fame, denied the child was his until a judge ordered him to undergo a DNA test which proved otherwise.

He was subsequently ordered to pay £1,700-a-month for Jon’s upkeep for the first 18 years of his life, a drop in the ocean given his vast wealth — he is worth around £155million. But despite paying up, Sir Tom made it clear that he wanted nothing else to do with his offspring.

‘It wasn’t something I had planned,’ said Sir Tom when he finally spoke about the matter in 2008.

‘If I had planned it, I would have done something more than just financially. But it wasn’t. I just fell for it. I just fell for the seduction.’

For Jon, who was 20 at the time, those words cut like a knife. The fallout from that bitter legal battle inevitably cast a pall across much of the young man’s life.

By the age of four, he would play his mother’s Tom Jones tapes constantly, singing along to his greatest hits, Delilah and It’s Not Unusual.

When he demanded to know why he didn’t have a daddy, Katherine showed him a magazine story about the paternity case, which made world headlines at the time, and told him that the singer was busy entertaining and couldn’t be with them.

That news left young Jon harbouring hopes that one day his father would simply walk through the door and do ‘normal’ things with him, like eat dinner and watch TV.

By the age of ten, when his mother finally made it clear that this longed for event simply wasn’t going to happen, Jon became angry.

A full-blown rebellion followed and his troubled adolescence swiftly descended into what has so far been an utterly dysfunctional adult life in which he has dabbled with drugs and struggled to hold down a job.

DeSPITe inheriting his famous father’s milliondollar voice and brooding good looks, Jon’s singing career has never really taken off. He has been homeless, on and off, for several years now.

When I first met Jon seven years ago to interview him for the Mail, he’d already walked out of a boy band, claiming he didn’t like being promoted as the progeny of Sir Tom. Afterwards, numerous TV shows called, trying to get him to appear. He ignored them all.

Three years later, Jon told me he’d reached rock bottom and had been living in his car in Miami. He was arrested for possessing drugs, spent four nights in jail and was sent to rehab in exchange for the charges being dropped.

Afterwards, he tried to turn his life around, finding work as a chef,