JAN MOIR: Captain Sir Tom Moore’s legacy is more soured with every passing day
Captain Sir Tom Moore’s daughter has gone on holiday this week, seemingly without a care in the world. Hannah Ingram-Moore even posted a happy family snap from picture-sharing app BeReal on Instagram.
Be real? Get real would be much more appropriate. Certainly, millions of those who contributed to The Captain Tom Foundation during the pandemic must be fervently wishing for a bracing dose of reality — they certainly deserve some clarity — to descend upon the murky matters that seem to swirl perpetually around this family and their charity. What the heck is going on now?
Mrs Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin face criticism after being accused of using her late father’s name to add a spa pool extension to their £1.2 million home. I shudder to think what Kevin from Grand Designs would think of the hideous municipal toilet block-style building they have thrown up in their back yard, but let’s not digress.
It was right here, in the garden of this home in Bedfordshire, that Captain Sir Tom became a national hero after raising £38 million for the NHS by walking 100 laps around the lawn before his 100th birthday. That his great achievement should be framed within the terms of a swimming pool extension that may or may not be illegal is a very sad development.
Look, there is absolutely no suggestion that the family have done anything unlawful nor indeed used any of the charity’s funds to build the blasted pool. However, the situation remains that a great number of people think that is exactly what they did.
JAN MOIR: Captain Sir Tom Moore’s daughter has gone on holiday this week, seemingly without a care in the world
Second World War veteran Captain Tom Moore with his daughter Hannah as he celebrated his 100th birthday
The optics are terrible. To look at the comments under that innocent post is to understand the depth of the anger out there, misplaced as it might well be.
Yet equally, Mrs Ingram-Moore needs to realise if you appoint yourself the £85,000-a-year head of a charity set up in your father’s name and funded by public donation, your behaviour needs to be above reproach and suspicion at all times. Your behaviour needs to be impeccable.
You not only have a responsibility to your own charity, you have a debt of obligation to every other charity, too. Otherwise you sow the seeds of distrust amongst the public. People might start to think you are taking advantage of their generosity and stop donating to charity in protest, because they don’t respond well to being treated like mugs.
And originally proposing a salary for yourself of £100,000 — which Hannah Ingram-Moore did, until the Charity Commission turned it down — is no one’s idea of selfless service in the name and in the spirit of Captain Sir Tom’s achievement.
Hannah also styles herself as one of the country’s ‘top businesswomen’ and charges £250 an hour for lifestyle coaching, which doesn’t much suggest a selfless devotion to altruism either.
Instead of coaching others, surely she needs to be tutored herself in the finer points of charity etiquette and respecting public trust. Cast your mind back, if you can bear it, to those early pandemic days. When people were dying in their thousands, hugging was illegal and the police used drones to spy on dog walkers.
Sometimes when I walk past my local supermarket, past where we used to queue outside during the social distancing rules of lockdown, it is hard to believe that it all actually happened. The memory plays tricks. Did we really wash the plastic on our bags of spinach, wear masks on buses and live in isolation for long periods of time? We did all that and more.
Then at one of the bleakest moments, when the future seemed uncertain and the shops had run out of flour and Fairy Liquid again, along came Captain Tom Moore. The 99-year-old and his sponsored walk around his garden, leaning on his walking frame, captured the public imagination in a wonderful way.
Mrs Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin face criticism after being accused of using her late father’s name to add a spa pool extension to their £1.2 million home
It is no exaggeration to say that for one brief, shining moment, this decorated war veteran inspired a nation at a low ebb with his courage, tenacity and concern for others. Captain Sir Tom died in February 2021, leaving a legacy of charity and kindness of which he could be proud. Or could he?
As time marches on, that legacy becomes more soured with every passing day.
Just one month after his death, the Charity Commission opened a case into the Captain Tom Foundation, started by his family. Investigations have escalated and the charity is no longer receiving donations while the inquiry continues.
There are concerns about the charity and a firm linked to the Ingram-Moore family, there are worries about the trustees’ decision-making prowess, there is disquiet over the charity’s governance.
The charitable explanation is that the Ingram-Moore family were simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before them, that they simply could not cope with the behemoth that the Captain Tom Foundation became. The uncharitable explanation just doesn’t bear thinking about. Be real? Get real.
According to Waitrose, one in four British adults doesn’t know how to boil an egg. The other three don’t know what an egg is, while one in ten believes that eggs are delicious chocolate treats dropped off by the Easter Bunny once a year.
Reality bites for Vampire’s Wife
High fashion remains a mystery to most of us. Who are these wand-sized people regularly buying £1,200 trousers from The Row and £2,000 Victoria Beckham suits?
What’s even harder to understand is why high-end designer The Vampire’s Wife is now on the brink of bankruptcy.
Its ‘Falconetti’ dress was surely garment of the decade, worn by everyone from Keira Knightley and the Princess of Wales to Cate Blanchett, Kate Moss, Florence Welch and Kylie Minogue.
It was a perfect piece of design, a beautiful frock that suited everyone.
But even selling them from £800 to £2,000 and beyond, not even the company that made it could make it work financially.
Its ‘Falconetti’ dress was surely garment of the decade, worn by everyone from Keira Knightley (above) and the Princess of Wales to Cate Blanchett, Kate Moss, Florence Welch and Kylie Minogue
Roger is here to serve… the Royal Family
The Princess of Wales has a happy royal knack of looking utterly thrilled to meet whoever bowls into her orbit, yet she was giddier than usual at Wimbledon.
Of course she was, for she was attending matches with Roger Federer at her side. Roger! The tournament doesn’t seem the same without Rog bouncing along the baseline with his excellent legs and admirable forearms and immaculate hair.
He is terribly missed by us all, so it is a consolation to learn that Kate has made it her business to make him her friend. What is the point of being royal, after all, if it is not to be able to invite Roger to tea?
Over the years he has given Prince George tennis lessons and advised Kate on her serve. In 2017, she shocked fans by breaking royal protocol when she kissed Roger three times to congratulate him on winning Wimbledon for the eighth time.
‘This is normal in his native Switzerland,’ said an onlooker. So is the frosty expression of his wife Mirka, forever grimly at his side.
What is the point of being royal, after all, if it is not to be able to invite Roger to tea?
Age of the imbeciles
A moronic tourist from England accused of defacing the Colosseum has said he was not aware of the age of the ancient monument. Ivan Dimitrov, a fitness instructor from Bristol who originally hails from Bulgaria, was filmed by another tourist as he scratched ‘Ivan + Hayley 23’ on to the wall.
Now he is begging Italian authorities not to lock him up. I hope they do — he needs to be taught a lesson and not just one about history. Ivan says he didn’t realise the building’s importance or antiquity. I know he’s a fitness instructor, but that is no excuse.
One of the seven wonders of the world, the Colosseum has stood there for nearly 2,000 years.
It says something about the youth of today — no, you can’t stop me, I’m going to say it — that they can go to visit something so stupendous and yet somehow think it is still all about them.
Why do people feel they have to leave a trace? Like chaining a padlock on to a bridge or building little cairns in memory of themselves? It drives me insane.
There is to be a cold-case review of the Suzy Lamplugh murder. Suzy was 25 when she went missing in West London in July 1986.
Her body has never been found — nor has anyone ever been charged with her disappearance. Detectives have launched a fresh forensic probe, following up a new clue and scientific developments.
The review comes as the prime suspect’s parole hearing date approaches. John Cannan, now aged 68, is serving a minimum 35-year term for the 1987 murder of Shirley Banks in Bristol.
Almost four decades after estate agent Suzy disappeared, one can only hope that there will be answers, and closure for her family at last.
Sorry to have missed the coronation… er, King’s visit
Poor King Charles. He goes all the way to Edinburgh for a Coronation — please don’t call it a Coronation it wasn’t a Coronation, nothing fancy, just sandwiches and a cup of tea — and not only do few turn up, one who does is headbanger Patrick Harvie.
The perma-furious co-leader of the Scottish Greens addressed protesters, thundering on about Charles and Camilla spending good Scottish money indulging in ‘some sort of overpriced Game Of Thrones cosplay exercise’.
That was bad enough, then the Guardian newspaper found someone in the crowd called Linda Flex who said: ‘This is the height of nonsense. They’ve already spent all that money down in England when people can’t afford to feed their children. Has he no self-awareness?’
What absolute scenes. Sounds an absolute scream. Wish I’d been there, even if the newspaper patronisingly concluded that so few people attended because ‘many Scots are away on holiday’.
Poor King Charles. He goes all the way to Edinburgh for a Coronation
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