To the Captain Tom spa complex, where we might imagine pan-pipe versions of Vera Lynn classics wafting through the air, enveloping select visitors like a really luxurious waffle-weave robe. Perhaps there is some kind of water feature bubbling soothingly with a clear liquid – Captain Sir Tom’s London Dry Gin? – while beyond a notional He Walked So You Could Chill Jacuzzi lies an indoor pool (100 laps mandatory) and a legacy-guarding wellness experience without compare in the central Bedfordshire area.
If you’re thinking, “What did I just read?”, it probably won’t be the first time with the long-tailed story of the former army captain who, at the age of 99, walked up and down his garden to raise money for NHS charities during the early stages of the pandemic, and with this small act of kindness went stratospheric. Donations totalling £39m followed, as did a No 1 single, a knighthood, a range of branded products, from lunchboxes to wine calendars – and now, an active investigation by the Charity Commission into concerns the family personally profited from his name, and a planning dispute involving his daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, and her local council (more on that in due course). The Captain Tom Foundation this week stopped taking money from donors.
Selecting the weirdest moment of the Captain Tom phenom is a task that slips away from you the second you think you’ve got a hold on it. Just when you decide that it was the GQ cover, you suddenly remember that at one point the online retailer Redbubble was selling a Captain Tom miniskirt. (A product that was, I suppose, for all its WTF-ery, quite tame when you consider that this was the site that had also previously sold Schindler’s List leggings.) Then you think, no, no, it was the photo with Cliff Richard and Russ Abbot, during what was billed as the then 100-year-old’s dream holiday with the family to Barbados – a trip shortly after which Captain Tom contracted pneumonia and subsequently Covid, from which he died. But that’s before you remember that Wayne and Coleen Rooney’s son Klay went as Captain Tom to World Book Day in 2021, complete with homemade, tinfoil-wrapped walking frame and an itchy moustache Coleen told her Instagram followers he “wasn’t too happy” about. Like I say: you can’t play favourites with this stuff.
As for the proprietor of a new pool and spa complex built in obscure connection with Captain Tom’s charitable foundation, perhaps it’s not such a marmalade-dropper of a reveal to learn that it’s…… Captain Tom’s daughter’s account.
Discussing how their lives have changed beyond recognition since her father’s walk, Ms Ingram-Moore is fond of talking of the “sliding doors of fate”. Regrettably, it is with the sliding doors of her spa complex that we must concern ourselves today, though they are, of course, merely one feature of the large building erected in her garden. A planning application was submitted in Hannah and her husband’s name, though the design and access and heritage statement referenced the Captain Tom Foundation, explaining the annexe was “urgently needed” for presentations and memorabilia. The charity’s independent trustees this week said they knew nothing about this, and would not have authorised it. In any case, the structure that ended up being erected, reportedly to the consternation of many of her neighbours, deviated from this noble aim in that it is actually an indoor pool house – of a different design and size to the building on the planning application – that also contains changing rooms and bathrooms. And maybe a discreet charity office nook; we don’t know at this stage.
What we do know is that Central Bedfordshire council has taken issue with the largely unauthorised new structure and ordered the Ingram-Moores to tear it down. (A command that my brain cannot read without hearing it delivered in the style of Ronald Reagan’s Berlin speech: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this spa complex!”)
So what are we dealing with, as far as the misfortune-prone Ms Ingram-Moore is concerned? Looks-wise, she has a touch of that manipulative liability Janice Soprano, though the series of stories to have emerged over the past year or so do seem to be pushing her into the file marked “escaped Julia Davis character”. It was Hannah who came up with the OG brand name, when she took what would turn out to be the momentous decision to press release her father’s walk to the local paper. “We’ll call you Captain Tom,” she said, according to her own account. “You can’t do that,” her father replied, again according to her own account. “I retired in 1945!” He would end up being called Captain Tom.
As for the import of this still-developing story, nothing should take away from the old man’s achievement, nor his sweet grace amid the madness that soon engulfed him. But the way the story has progressed has upset the delicate balance between naivety and cynicism in many people. On the one hand, the new information might give pause to those who greeted every raised eyebrow about the mushrooming phenomenon with a defiant “Don’t be so cynical!” On the other, I’m afraid it will certainly lead to further adoptions of a view you hear and read depressingly often these days – that all charities are a racket, and that’s why the person declaring they’re a racket doesn’t give any money to charity.
In the end, though, perhaps the reason it will run and run is that it so neatly combines the British people’s equal favourite types of poppy: the ones worn for Remembrance Day – and the tall ones that need cutting down.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £9.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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