There was a Saturday Night Live skit a few years back, where Tim Meadows played a silk-robed Lothario who sipped Courvoisier and took viewer calls on his public television show.
Every time a woman called in, Meadows' character would cock his eyebrow wickedly. "Ooooooh, it's a lady," he'd coo.
This, I'm pretty certain, is Tom Jones' real life inner monologue.
For over 40 years, the Welsh singer has famously winked his way across the world, charming his mostly female audiences with nary more than a waggle of his hips and a catalogue of frankly sexual songs.
On Tuesday night at the MTS Centre, the panty count was a middling 15. But if you fear that Winnipeg's ladies have cooled on Jones, be soothed: When Jones doffed his trademark white jacket for You Can Keep Your Hat On (I can? For what?), the titillated cheers were deafening.
But this review is getting ahead of itself. Let's backtrack to 7:30 p.m., when Jones made a casual entrance, joining his 10-piece band for a solo version of Raise Your Hand, his 1969 duet with Janis Joplin.
Dressed in that white jacket, a black shirt open to the sternum, and a golden cross nestled in a thatch of chest hair, the 68-year-old singer sauntered through a set balanced between his own classic cheesecake tunes and familiar covers.
Early on the night, he pulled a page from a fellow Jones -- country legend George -- with He Stopped Loving Her Today, and followed it up with the first big hit of the night, Delilah, which had the crowd of mature and neatly turned-out women singing along.
"You're hot," one fan yelled, just before he launched into Cry For Home, his duet with Van Morrison.
As far as Jones' supersmooth baritone, it sounded best on the stripped-down Sinatra standard Here's That Rainy Day. During a two-song blues interlude, where he was joined at the front of the stage by his guitarist, Jones found some extra vocal grit for his "sexy blues," Git Me Some.
He saved his hottest tunes for the end of the set. She's A Lady got ladies on the floor -- some of them easily in their eighties -- shimmying and screaming along; on What's New Pussycat, he punctuated his "whoa-oh-oh-oh-whoa-ohs" with a fast-paced waltz across the floor.
Shortly before 9 p.m., Jones capped off the easy-going, traditionalist show with a one-two punch of the psychedelic Sex Bomb and cruise ship standard, It's Not Unusual.
For an encore, Jones showed off his funky side with a cover of Prince's frisky Kiss, hamming it up and dancing around the piles of panties on the stage.
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