Having stolen the hearts of a locked-down nation by walking 100 laps of his Bedfordshire garden to raise money for the NHS, Captain Tom Moore sat down with publishers, publicists and his daughter, Hannah, to hammer out a £1.5 million, four-book deal.
The former British army officer, who raised a staggering £38.9 million for NHS Covid charities while marking his 100th 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡day in April 2020, had become an overnight national treasure, a symbol of hope and resilience in the midst of the misery of a global pandemic.
So what better time to write his life story to further benefit good causes?
‘With the offer to write this memoir I have been given the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation now established in my name,’ he wrote in the prologue to Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day, published in September 2020.
He was ‘deeply honoured’ he said, ‘to be given yet another opportunity to serve the country of which I am proud’.
Such noble sentiments were typical of a man who dedicated the last months of his life to helping others and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth herself in July 2020.
Alas, they have been grimly overshadowed by the revelation this week that, in the wake of Sir Tom’s death from Covid in February 2021, it was Hannah and her husband who pocketed the massive advance from his books, not the charity.
Furthermore, a highly critical report published by the Charity Commission on Thursday concluded that Hannah and Colin Ingram-Moore benefited ‘significantly’ through their association with the high-profile Captain Tom Foundation and were guilty of ‘serious and repeated’ instances of misconduct, mismanagement and failures of integrity – among them the book deal.
The public had been ‘misled’, said the damning report, when buying items they thought would benefit the Captain Tom Foundation, which was set up in May 2020 to carry on raising money for charity after the success of his sponsored walk.
More, in a moment, of the limited edition bottles of Captain Tom gin, demands for a six-figure salary to be CEO of the charity, lucrative personal appearances and the £200,000 ‘Captain Tom’ swimming pool and spa the Ingram-Moores built in the garden of their £2 million home in the village of Marston Moretaine – and were forced to tear down by planning authorities.
Even more damning, the Mail can reveal today, are the cash-making schemes they didn’t get off the ground, including a Netflix series and even a stage show which, they told one business associate, would ‘be their pension’.
For while the couple have repeatedly denied blurring their private interests with those of the charity set up in Captain Tom’s name – even claiming this week that the report has treated them ‘unjustly and unfairly’ – those who worked alongside them have revealed a very different story to the Mail.
Among them is a publishing source who said: ‘Fame went to Hannah’s head. It was clear she was enjoying the limelight created by Tom. She thought they were as big as the Royal Family.’
The source added: ‘It was outrageous they kept the money [from the book]. There’s not one person who helped in the process who doesn’t feel they’ve been duped.’
Then there’s the PR who was brought in to help out the couple when concerns were first raised about them in early 2022. Initially believing their protestations of innocence, they came to realise that chartered accountant Colin and Hannah, who describes herself on her website as ‘one of Britain’s most successful businesswomen’, were ‘very financially obsessed’.
All the fame and the millions pouring in ‘possibly went to their heads,’ said the PR. An observation that has the ring of truth to it when you remember how delighted Mrs Ingram-Moore seemed soaking up the applause when she took her seat in the royal box at Wimbledon in 2021.
The Captain Tom Foundation charity was incorporated in May 2020, just days after the original Just Giving fundraiser, which made worldwide headlines, ended. During the registration process, the charity confirmed it would be independent from Captain’s Tom family and that there were no plans for any family members to benefit from it.
Yet questions were first raised in February 2022, just a year after his death, amid reports that £240,000 of the charity’s £400,000 expenditure went on fundraising and admin costs and £50,000 of ‘reimbursed expenditure’ was paid to companies controlled by the Ingram-Moores.
In March that year, Mrs Ingram-Moore appeared on ITV’s This Morning show, denying any wrongdoing and saying her war hero father had taught her to ‘stand up, be accounted and be accountable’. ‘Hold me accountable,’ she asserted dramatically. ‘Hold my feet to the flame.’
But one of the PRs who worked for Mrs Ingram-Moore told the Mail that while she ‘put up a good show’ on the This Morning sofa, it became clear that they were both very keen to cash in on ‘an opportunity few people ever get’.
The PR said: ‘There were little things. They had plans for a stage show. They told me they had enough footage in the can to make a documentary on Netflix. They said that would be their pension. I formed the view that they were very financially obsessed with it.’
The PR added: ‘She is not a heartless woman. She adored her old man. They did not ever expect to be in that position. Having raised £39 million for the NHS, it possibly went to their heads.
‘I think, after it was all over, they thought they could continue to raise money but could also benefit themselves by doing it.’
This brings us to Club Nook, the private company set up by the couple in April 2020 – before Captain Tom had even finished his fundraiser – to manage his intellectual property and the commercial interests.
It was into this company that the £1.47 million book advance was paid by publishing giant Penguin the following month. Penguin and the books’ promoter, Carver PR, told the Charity Commission inquiry that the family gave repeated assurances that part of the advance would be used to set up and help fund a charitable foundation.
The publishing source, who spoke to the Mail this week, said: ‘In Tom’s mind, the money from the books was definitely going to charity and anyone buying that book would have assumed the money made from the sales was going to charity.’
The prologue Captain Tom wrote in that first book, his £20 autobiography Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day, certainly appeared to suggest so.
He wrote: ‘It was Hannah who first came up with the idea of a Captain Tom Foundation, telling me, “We want to carry your journey forward. We have a responsibility to create a legacy for all that has happened. We need to think of how you’d like any future money raised in your name to be spent”.’
Captain Tom went on: ‘It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer, “We need to give hope where it’s needed most”.’
A press release, issued in May 2020 to announce the forthcoming publication of two of the books, said that both ‘will support the launch of his newly formed charity’ and included a quote from Captain Tom, stating: ‘I am so looking forward to sharing my autobiography with you, which will help launch my Foundation. I’d better get writing!’
Surely, then, it couldn’t have been clearer where the money was intended to go. But the book deal signed by Mrs Ingram-Moore meant the entire advance went to Club Nook and only £18,000 – £1 a copy from sales of the first book – went to the charity.
In 2022, she and her husband refused a request by the Charity Commission to ‘honour the commitment’ made by Captain Tom in his foreword. They were twice asked to ‘rectify matters by making a donation to the charity’ but declined both times.
Of course, as the publishing sources explained to the Mail, this week: ‘Without his charity walk and the massive public response to it, there would have been no interest in Tom’s story.’
After all, Captain Tom’s walk had begun with little fanfare after Mrs Ingram-Moore wrote a press release which she sent to local media, but it struck a chord with the national mood and took off.
Yet in November 2023, Mrs Ingram-Moore again went on television to defend herself and told TV presenter Piers Morgan that she and her family kept £800,000 in profits from three of Captain Tom’s books because it was ‘what he wanted’.
‘They were his books. They were never anything to do with the charity,’ she said, contradicting what had been said at the time.
And the book advance was certainly not the only evidence of family greed. There was also the question of Hannah’s pay when she became the Captain Tom Foundation’s interim chief executive in 2021.
Twice she went on television and denied she had been offered a ‘six-figure sum’ for the role. But in reality, she initially asked for a £150,000 remuneration package. The £100,000 the charity eventually proposed paying her was rejected by the Charity Commission as unreasonable and she ended up receiving the equivalent of £85,000 per annum – still a huge salary by most standards.
The Commission’s report said that Mrs Ingram-Moore’s denials were ‘disingenuous’, ‘as the evidence demonstrates that she was very much involved in the discussions around setting her salary’. She stepped down as CEO after nine months.
While earning this salary, she was paid an additional £18,000 for attending the Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Awards in 2021.
A separate sum of just £2,000 was paid to the charity. The Charity Commission rejected her claim that she had undertaken the work in a ‘personal capacity’.
It was one of several examples in their 30-page report of how the Ingram-Moores had failed to manage conflicts of interest which led to ‘direct and private benefit for the family’.
If in the past the Ingram-Moores have tried to defend themselves by claiming ‘naivety’, then it’s worth noting that a month before she signed the Virgin Media contract, Mrs Ingram-Moore herself removed a ‘conflict of interests’ clause from her employment contract with the foundation.
In an email to the charity she said it would be ‘too restrictive’.
The couple’s desire to capitalise on Captain Tom’s legacy didn’t end there, however.
In August 2021 they used the charity’s name to apply for planning permission for an indoor swimming pool building in the grounds of the family’s Grade II-listed home.
Initially approved by Central Bedfordshire council, largely because of its supposed charitable purposes, the family went on to build a larger structure, containing a pool, spa, kitchen and toilets.
They removed references to Captain Tom in a retrospective application for the changed structure, later telling the Charity Commission inquiry that its original inclusion was ‘an error’ and that they were both distracted because they were ‘busy undertaking global media work’.
They were later ordered to remove the complex, which was demolished last February.
Even more tawdry, perhaps, was the ‘unauthorised’ limited edition barrel-aged Captain Tom gin, being advertised online for £100 a bottle, with ‘all profits’ going to the charity.
The inquiry found that this had breached rules as there was ‘no written agreement in place detailing the arrangement between the charity and the distillery’.
In any case, of the 100 limited edition gin bottles, only 21 were sold, resulting in a £530 donation to the charity.
According to the PR who worked for the Ingram-Moores, they ‘vanished’ at the height of the media storm around whether profits from sales of Captain Tom gin were actually going to charity.
‘I formed the opinion that when the kitchen gets hot, they leave it to the hired help to sort it out. It’s not the way grown-ups behave in the middle of a media crisis.’
Meanwhile, in Marston Moretaine, villagers who once rallied around Captain Tom’s charitable escapades have been left dismayed by the behaviour of his daughter and son-in-law.
Until a few weeks ago, the Ingram-Moores’ house was on the market for £2.2 million. Once the scene of such a happy, uplifting phenomenon, say neighbours, it will now for ever be associated with the downfall of his family.
‘Tom would have been so upset if he’d lived to find out that all the money hadn’t actually gone to charity like we all thought,’ said 75-year-old retired engineer, Billy Moore who came to know Captain Tom when he moved in with his daughter after the death of his second wife in 2006.
‘Greed seemed to set in when people were supporting Tom. It clearly all went pear-shaped.
‘If there had been an apology and Hannah had held up her hands, I think people living here might have felt less of a bad taste, but I think people are just waiting for them to go.’
Behind the closed gates of their luxurious rectory home, the Ingram-Moores have remained tight-lipped about the report, aside from a statement accusing the charity watchdog of a ‘predetermined agenda’ and of ‘unfairly tarnishing’ their name.
There has been no apology, no explanation as to why an already wealthy family would have wanted to take even a penny of the money raised in Captain Tom’s name.
Another villager, 57-year-old Ann Allen, told the Mail: ‘People feel let down on Captain Tom’s behalf.
‘I think we feel glad he’s no longer here to see what’s happened. He’d be turning in his grave.’
Additional reporting by Tim Stewart.