Grilling Capt Tom’s daughter was one of my most difficult interviews – but betrayal of his legacy was too huge to ignore
This was one of the most difficult interviews of my career.
I absolutely loved Captain Tom Moore and was one of the first people in the media to put the spotlight on his amazing walk, and I spoke to him many times during and after it, including for my Life Stories show.
He rightly became a national hero for raising nearly £40 million for NHS charities, and there’s no doubt his family played an important role in helping him do that.
But there has been mounting public concern since he died over whether Tom’s daughter Hannah and her husband Colin may have personally benefitted from exploiting the great man’s name and status.
And when they agreed to sit down with me on camera at their home, with their two kids, I knew I couldn’t let my personal history with them all cloud my journalistic judgement.
So I asked all the questions people have been wanting to ask them, and which journalists have sometimes been getting very obtuse or even blatantly untrue answers to, and the truth has finally emerged.
And to be blunt, it makes unedifying reading.
Under intensive questioning, the Ingram-Moores finally admitted that they pocketed over £800,000 from the proceeds of three Captain Tom books, money that the public will have assumed from various publicity statements at the time was going to the Captain Tom Foundation.
What they did wasn’t illegal but many will think it’s immoral.
Hannah also reveals that she accepted £18,000 to present awards at a ceremony named after the Foundation, when she was CEO of the Foundation.
That too was very ill-advised, as was her decision to accept the job in the first place on a salary of £85,000 (she originally agreed to be paid £100,000 but the charity commission rejected that) when she had zero experience of running charities.
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As for the infamous spa, there is simply no justification for them putting it inside the supposed Captain Tom memorial building.
It was obviously just a luxury treat for the family, almost certainly paid for by the book money, and the fact they secretly used the Foundation’s name to apply for planning permission for the building without clearing it with the Foundation trustees, stinks too.
At the end of my interrogation, the whole family hugged and consoled a sobbing Hannah.
It would take a heart of stone not to feel some empathy for a family who undoubtedly did a lot of good with the Captain Tom walk and have now seen their whole world come crashing down.
And the disgusting torrents of abuse and death threats they’ve all received from the very start are appalling, especially those directed at Hannah’s young daughter Georgia.
But their reaction at the end spoke volumes.
Hannah and Colin have deliberately kept secret the details of their financial windfalls off the back of Captain Tom, knowing that it would enrage the public as I’m sure it will.
The bottom line is they should never have accepted or kept a penny for themselves from anything to do with Captain Tom and public money.
It wasn’t just a clear conflict of interest, and deeply unethical, it was a betrayal of his legacy.