Speaker 1: Pushkin Wonderful News Cautionary Tales has been nominated for a
Speaker 1: Webby Award. The category is Best Original Music Score and
Speaker 1: Sound Design. Where you know who deserves the credit for that,
Speaker 1: It is the wonderful Pascal Wise. Pascal has been with
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales right from the start. I remember sitting with
Speaker 1: him plotting how to make the sound of rats scurrying
Speaker 1: in a deserted warehouse for our airship episode. If you
Speaker 1: would like to show us some love, and show more
Speaker 1: importantly Pascal wyse some love, go along to Webby Awards
Speaker 1: dot com and give us a vote. We will put
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes. An old man walked
Speaker 1: up and down his garden. Then he walked up and
Speaker 1: down his garden again. The next day, the old man
Speaker 1: walked up and down his garden. This may not sound
Speaker 1: very interesting, but in April twenty twenty, the old man
Speaker 1: walking up and down his garden was big news in
Speaker 1: the UK. Day after day, the old man was on
Speaker 1: all the newspaper front pages. The BBC's and a camera
Speaker 1: crew to the garden to broadcast live to the nation.
Speaker 1: As the old man shuffled carefully along, gripping the handles
Speaker 1: of his walking frame, his shoulders hunched, smartly dressed in
Speaker 1: a shirt tie and blazer, army medals pinned to his chest.
Speaker 1: In endless television interviews, the old man shared his homespun
Speaker 1: optimistic philosophy. Tomorrow will be a good day. Lord knows
Speaker 1: we needed some optimism. In April twenty twenty, a month
Speaker 1: into the fir COVID lockdown, what else was on the
Speaker 1: news in Britain? Daily government press conferences with their grim
Speaker 1: statistics about infections, hospital admissions and deaths. The slogan on
Speaker 1: the lectern exhorted Brits to stay home, protect the NHS.
Speaker 1: A yes, the NHS, the National Health Service. In windows
Speaker 1: of houses, people put up posters their children's crew drawings
Speaker 1: of rainbows, adorned with the words thank you NHS. Once
Speaker 1: a week, at eight pm on Thursday, would all open
Speaker 1: our doors, stand on our doorsteps, bang spoons on saucepans
Speaker 1: and applaud the clap for carers. Then we'd all go
Speaker 1: back inside to assume the business of staying home. It
Speaker 1: was a strange time. Along came a man who captured
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist, an old man walking up and down his garden,
Speaker 1: Captain Tom Moore, was ninety nine years old. He was
Speaker 1: recovering from a fall that had fractured his hip. He
Speaker 1: wanted to walk up and down his garden a hundred
Speaker 1: times before his one hundredth birthday, a sponsored walk to
Speaker 1: raise money for the NHS nurses who'd cared for him.
Speaker 1: The British people took Captain Tom to their hearts. Thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds rolled in for Captain Tom's sponsored walk, then millions,
Speaker 1: then tens of millions. It was the feel good story
Speaker 1: of the Lockdown. I mentioned that this story started in
Speaker 1: a strange time, but as the world got back to normal,
Speaker 1: the story itself just got stranger. It tells us something
Speaker 1: about our own impulse to give to good causes, and
Speaker 1: it ends in disgrace with a wrecking crew in the
Speaker 1: old man's garden. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. Tom Moore's family had his one hundredth birthday
Speaker 1: party all planned out. They'd roaster Hog and hire a
Speaker 1: singer to perform hits from Tom's youth, like the Vera
Speaker 1: Lynn classic We'll Meet Again. When that song came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, Tom was nineteen years old. Young
Speaker 1: men were going to fight in the Second World War,
Speaker 1: and Vera Lynn gave them the words for their goodbyes
Speaker 1: to their families. We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't
Speaker 1: know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
Speaker 1: Tom served for six years in the British Army, rising
Speaker 1: to the rank of captain. He built a career in
Speaker 1: sales and management, raised two daughters, retired and nursed his
Speaker 1: wife through dementia. After his wife died, Tom moved in
Speaker 1: with his younger daughter, Hannah, her husband, and their two children.
Speaker 1: Hannah ingram Moore is one of Britain's leading business women,
Speaker 1: as she says on her website, which offers her services
Speaker 1: as a brand marketing coach and acclaimed business strategist. The
Speaker 1: family lived in a big house in a village in Bedfordshire,
Speaker 1: an hour north of London. Gave Tom a purpose, as
Speaker 1: Hannah later explained to a journalist. It started to feel
Speaker 1: invisible in old age. People look through me, he complained.
Speaker 1: Even in his nineties he could still make himself useful.
Speaker 1: In the ingram Moor's big house, Tom fed the dogs,
Speaker 1: mowed the lawn, tinkered in the workshop and cooked roast dinners.
Speaker 1: One day, unloading the dishwasher, he tripped. I got tangled
Speaker 1: up on my own feet, he recalled. He hit his head,
Speaker 1: fractured his hip, and punctured his lung. From his bedside,
Speaker 1: Hannah called her sister, he'd better come. He's not going
Speaker 1: to make it, but he did. After weeks in hospital,
Speaker 1: Tom was well enough to go back home and determined
Speaker 1: to get back on his feet again. He ordered a
Speaker 1: treadmill so he could keep up his physio exercises during winter.
Speaker 1: The family started to plan his one hundredth birthday party
Speaker 1: for the end of April. Not many heroes of the
Speaker 1: Second World War made it to that age. Maybe the
Speaker 1: local newspaper would like to print his picture. Hannah drafted
Speaker 1: a press release, but then came COVID nobody would be
Speaker 1: holding any parties in April. As the weather improved, Tom
Speaker 1: moved his physio regime into the garden, walking up and
Speaker 1: down with the aid of his walking frame. Hannah's husband
Speaker 1: suggested a challenge. Could you do one hundred laps of
Speaker 1: the garden to celebrate your one hundredth birthday. I'll give
Speaker 1: a pounder lap to the charity of your choice. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: said Tom. He chose NHS Charities Together, an organization that
Speaker 1: supports frontline healthcare workers, like the ones who had nursed
Speaker 1: him back to health after his fall. The children took
Speaker 1: a video of Tom walking with his frame and sent
Speaker 1: it to friends and family. Hannah set up a page
Speaker 1: on the website just giving dot com. She set a
Speaker 1: target of a thousand pounds about twelve hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: Then she remembered the draft press release about the party
Speaker 1: that wasn't going to happen. She rewrote it, sharing details
Speaker 1: of Tom's sponsored walk instead, and sent it off to
Speaker 1: the local media. You can never be sure what's going
Speaker 1: to go viral. Lots of people set themselves personal challenges
Speaker 1: and ask for pledges to charity to motivate them to
Speaker 1: see that challenge through. The vast majority hold no interest
Speaker 1: at all for anyone beyond friends and family. Why did
Speaker 1: Captain Tom make headlines? One answer comes from metaphor language
Speaker 1: we choose to talk about events. When the COVID pandemic
Speaker 1: came along, For example, some used the metaphor of a
Speaker 1: natural disaster, a tsunami of illness approaching our shores. Some
Speaker 1: used metaphors from sport. We had to think of Lockdown
Speaker 1: as a marathon, not a sprint, but the most common
Speaker 1: metaphor war COVID was an attacker, an enemy that must
Speaker 1: be fought. The choice of metaphor matters In times of war.
Speaker 1: Governments can impose authoritarian measures that we'd never normally let
Speaker 1: them get away with. People can be asked to make
Speaker 1: sacrifices for the common good. In a broadcast to the
Speaker 1: nation early in the first Lockdown, the Queen herself ninety
Speaker 1: three years old, asked Britains for those sacrifices.
Speaker 2: I hope in the years to come everyone will be
Speaker 2: able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,
Speaker 2: and those who come after us will say the Britons
Speaker 2: of this generation were as strong as any.
Speaker 1: As strong as any. The Queen was asking us to
Speaker 1: compare ourselves to the strongest generation, the one that defeated Hitler.
Speaker 1: In case that wasn't clear enough.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the very first broadcast I made
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: The Queen ended her message to the nation by asking
Speaker 1: us to endure the loneliness of Lockdown and have faith
Speaker 1: that better times lay ahead.
Speaker 2: We will be with our friends again. We will be
Speaker 2: with our families again. We will meet again.
Speaker 1: We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when. The
Speaker 1: virus was the Nazis, the pandemic was the Second World War.
Speaker 1: Enduring the law lockdown was like surviving the Blitz. Then
Speaker 1: into the national consciousness shuffled Captain Tom. Here was a
Speaker 1: man who'd served his nation in the Second World War,
Speaker 1: a living link to that spirit of collective sacrifice that
Speaker 1: had got us through the war and would get us
Speaker 1: through the lockdown. Determinedly plodding up and down his garden
Speaker 1: raising money in aid of frontline NHS workers. Here was
Speaker 1: a man who personified the very best of British, selfless, stoical, steadfast.
Speaker 1: With hindsight, you can see why the nation latched on
Speaker 1: to Captain Tom. You couldn't have come up with a
Speaker 1: better symbol of British lockdown spirit if you had tried.
Speaker 1: But when Hannah ingram Moore pressed send on her email
Speaker 1: to the local press, she could hardly have imagined the
Speaker 1: perfect storm she was about to unleash. Cautionary tales will
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. Hannah ingram Moore's press release
Speaker 1: leads to an interview on a local radio station. Donations
Speaker 1: on just giving dot Com pass the one thousand pounds target.
Speaker 1: She gets a call from a local television station. What
Speaker 1: might be a realistic new target? Hannah wanders five thousand.
Speaker 1: The local TV people are skeptical. It's a lovely story,
Speaker 1: they say, but don't get your hopes too high. The
Speaker 1: economy is ground to a halt with a lockdown. Nobody's
Speaker 1: in the mood to spend money at the moment. The
Speaker 1: piece on local television catches the attention of national television.
Speaker 1: The BBC want to interview Tom live on their breakfast show.
Speaker 1: Hannah and the family scramble to figure out the technology.
Speaker 1: They put an old music stand in front of Tom's
Speaker 1: favorite chair and secure Hannah's phone to it with blue tag.
Speaker 1: Tom's a bit deaf and the phone speaker isn't very loud,
Speaker 1: so Hannah perches on a chair next to him to
Speaker 1: repeat what the BBC presenters say.
Speaker 3: So, how are you going to?
Speaker 1: What would you say to the nation? In order to
Speaker 1: help us all to keep calm.
Speaker 2: And carry The thing is, remember tomorrow is a good day.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow you'll maybe fine everything than to day.
Speaker 1: Donations. On Captain Tom's just Giving page, flash past five thousand,
Speaker 1: then ten thousand, one hundred thousand. The broadcaster Peers Morgan
Speaker 1: invites Tom and Hannah onto his morning show on ITV.
Speaker 1: By now, the totals closing in on half a million,
Speaker 1: and Morgan says he's going to help.
Speaker 4: Here's what I'm going to do, Tom, I'm going to
Speaker 4: put ten pounds of my own money into your fundraising
Speaker 4: today and I hope that encourages everyone watching at home
Speaker 4: to do the same, to be as generous as they can.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Tom's in the middle of yet another
Speaker 1: interview on the BBC when the presenter cuts in with
Speaker 1: breaking news. Donations have just passed five million, with no
Speaker 1: signs of stopping. In two thousand and seven, the economists
Speaker 1: Dean Carlin and Daniel Wood worked with the charity Freedom
Speaker 1: from Hunger to conduct an experiment. They wanted to explore
Speaker 1: a simple question, why do people donate to charity? There's
Speaker 1: an obvious answer, we want to do good in the world,
Speaker 1: obvious but often wrong. The researchers tested the impact of
Speaker 1: two kinds of direct male appeal. Both male shots started
Speaker 1: with a photo of a sad looking woman and some
Speaker 1: heartrending text Sebastiana has known nothing but abject poverty her
Speaker 1: entire life. One group of donors got a male shot
Speaker 1: that went on to explain how caring people like you
Speaker 1: had helped Sebastiana to turn her life around. Her young
Speaker 1: son Aurelio runs up to hug her. She says, I
Speaker 1: do whatever I can for my children. The other group's
Speaker 1: male shot instead talked about how rigorous scientific methodologies attested
Speaker 1: to the cost effectiveness of the charity's intervention. The result
Speaker 1: a few larger donors gave more when they received the
Speaker 1: text about rigorous scientific methodologies, but most smaller donors gave less.
Speaker 1: They weren't moved to donate by evidence that their donation
Speaker 1: would be maximally cost effective. They were moved by the
Speaker 1: thought of a young boy hugging his mum. They gave
Speaker 1: not to do good, but to feel good. Economists call
Speaker 1: it the warm glow effect, and it surely explains why
Speaker 1: BRIT's in the Pandemic threw so much money that Captain
Speaker 1: Tom's fundraising appeal. Not many will have read up on
Speaker 1: the detail of how NHS charities together proposed to use
Speaker 1: their donation and carefully weighed up against alternative potential recipients
Speaker 1: of their generosity. No, They wanted to see the look
Speaker 1: on the old man's face as a journalist tells him
Speaker 1: the total has blasted past another milestone. Captain Tom's fundraising
Speaker 1: made Britain feel good about itself in a difficult time.
Speaker 1: You've got a warm glow from being part of it.
Speaker 1: At the ingram Moor's House lockdown, life has gone crazy.
Speaker 1: Tom is doing dozens of interviews a day. The local
Speaker 1: post office is groaning under the weight of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of cards to congratulate Tom on his hundredth birthday.
Speaker 1: Far too many cards for the family to cope with.
Speaker 1: Volunteers at the local school put them on display. Soon
Speaker 1: they've taken over the whole school hall. Satellite broadcast vans
Speaker 1: descend on the village. Drones buzz over the ingram Moor's garden,
Speaker 1: Cameras poke through the hedge. It's overwhelming, intrusive, exhausting. As
Speaker 1: long as the money keeps rolling in for charity, Tom
Speaker 1: and his family decide they can't possibly stop. When the
Speaker 1: day arrives for Tom to complete his one hundredth lap,
Speaker 1: Tom's old army regiment sends soldiers to line up in
Speaker 1: his garden in a guard of honor socially distanced, of course.
Speaker 1: The BBC broadcasts the event live to the nation with
Speaker 1: a reverential commentary as Tom carefully pushes his walking frame
Speaker 1: towards the camera.
Speaker 3: And here he comes, Captain Tom Moore approaching his one
Speaker 3: hundredth birthday, one hundred laps of his garden during lockdown,
Speaker 3: all of the money going to NHS charity. Is a
Speaker 3: guard of honor from the first Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment.
Speaker 3: Inches to go, and there he is. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: The moment might have seemed just a little bit absurd,
Speaker 1: all this pomp and ceremony for an old man walking
Speaker 1: up and down his garden, but it was touching, nonetheless,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't over yet. Tom had completed his laps
Speaker 1: with a couple of weeks to spare before his birthday.
Speaker 1: The singer and Broadway star Michael Ball got in touch.
Speaker 1: He wanted to release a song with Tom, a cover
Speaker 1: of You'll Never Walk Alone When You Walk to the Storm.
Speaker 1: Tom recorded his part from his favorite armchair, Michael Ball
Speaker 1: from his home studio. The screen split into dozens of
Speaker 1: zoom call boxes filled with nurses from the NHS Voices
Speaker 1: of Care choir. The song went straight to number one.
Speaker 1: All proceeds went to NHS charities together feel on just
Speaker 1: giving dot com came to a close on the last
Speaker 1: day of April, Tom's one hundredth birthday. He'd raised an
Speaker 1: astonishing thirty eight point nine million pounds for NHS frontline workers.
Speaker 1: That's about fifty million dollars. The Royal Air Force celebrated
Speaker 1: by flying two wartime planes, a hurricane and a spitfire
Speaker 1: over Tom's garden. The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson announced that
Speaker 1: Tom would be knighted for his services to fundraising, becoming
Speaker 1: Captain Sir Tom. The whirlwind appeal was over. What next.
Speaker 1: Tom could, of course have chosen to withdraw from the
Speaker 1: public eye and live out his days in the privacy
Speaker 1: he had enjoyed until a few short weeks ago, But
Speaker 1: he was now a famous, much loved figure. Captain Tom
Speaker 1: had become a powerful brand. There must be opportunities to
Speaker 1: use his public profile to do even more good. The
Speaker 1: family decided a new charity should be set up, the
Speaker 1: Captain Tom Foundation. It would raise money and make grants
Speaker 1: to causes close to Tom's heart. The family also set
Speaker 1: up a new company and trademark, Captain Tom's name. The
Speaker 1: charity's website linked to and looked very much like an
Speaker 1: online store from which you could buy official Captain Tom
Speaker 1: t shirts a Captain Tom Rose or Captain Tom Gin
Speaker 1: that would give you a warm glow twice over from
Speaker 1: the name on the label and the booze in the bottle.
Speaker 1: If you clicked through to buy something from the online store,
Speaker 1: the proceeds would go to the Captain Tom Foundation. Right
Speaker 1: The online store also promoted in Tom's memoir Hastily commissioned
Speaker 1: by a publishing company entitled Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day.
Speaker 1: In the prologue, Tom wrote, astonishingly, at my age with
Speaker 1: the offer to write this memoir, I've also been given
Speaker 1: the chance to raise even more money for the charitable
Speaker 1: foundation now established in my name. That seemed pretty clear
Speaker 1: by the book, and the money would go towards the
Speaker 1: charitable foundation, or some of the money at least, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment. In December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the UK had just emerged from a second lockdown,
Speaker 1: and people briefly dared to hope for a festive Christmas,
Speaker 1: But as the nights grew darker, the virus started spreading
Speaker 1: again and quickly Hesitant to impose yet another strict lockdown,
Speaker 1: the government tried a touch of social pressure, asking people
Speaker 1: to keep their celebrations short, small and local. Limit who
Speaker 1: you meet. Do you really have to travel? Just because
Speaker 1: it's legal to do something doesn't mean it's sensible. The
Speaker 1: ingram More family meanwhile, had jetted off to Barbados courtesy
Speaker 1: of free flights from British Airways. As the mood back
Speaker 1: in the UK became grimmer, the Captain Tom Twitter account
Speaker 1: tweeted out a photo of Tom Hannah, her husband, and
Speaker 1: their two children enjoying a beautiful family day in the
Speaker 1: Barbados sunshine, it said, followed by a sunshine emoji and
Speaker 1: hashtag tomorrow will be a good day. The response on
Speaker 1: Twitter was mixed. Enjoy every moment, said one user, read
Speaker 1: the room advised another, I've omitted the swear words. The
Speaker 1: Captain Tom brand took a bit of a dent. Some
Speaker 1: people started to mutter are the family really in this
Speaker 1: for the purest of motives? The following month, January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Britain entered its third national lockdown. Tom himself
Speaker 1: caught COVID and went into hospital. Well wishes flooded in.
Speaker 1: The singer Michael Ball, for instance, tweeted love and prayers
Speaker 1: for More and his lovely family. Stay strong, sir, But
Speaker 1: this time Tom didn't make it. He died at the
Speaker 1: start of February. Amid the tributes, some people on Twitter
Speaker 1: said unkind things about the Barbados Jolly. The broadcaster Peers
Speaker 1: Morgan led to the defense of the ingram More family.
Speaker 1: He had spoken to Hannah. They had been deeply hurt
Speaker 1: by the online trolling. Morgan said it was despicable. It
Speaker 1: should also have been a warning Captain Tom was dead.
Speaker 1: But the Captain Tom Foundation lived on with a real
Speaker 1: chance to do good in the world. And that would
Speaker 1: mean that the Captain Tom brand would need to be
Speaker 1: looked after. But if anyone was going to understand the
Speaker 1: importance of managing public perceptions, it would be a brand
Speaker 1: marketing coach. Lucky then that this was precisely Hannah's area
Speaker 1: of expertise. By law, charities and companies must publish their
Speaker 1: accounts once a year. The first year of the Captain
Speaker 1: Tom Foundation's accounts showed it had raised over a million pounds.
Speaker 1: It had given out some grants to good causes and
Speaker 1: spent a larger amount Tom's support costs, including tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds paid to companies controlled by the ingram
Speaker 1: More family. But those were costs incurred in getting the
Speaker 1: charity up and running. It was fair enough that they'd
Speaker 1: be reimbursed. As for the company set up to own
Speaker 1: the Captain Tom trademarks, the accounts showed income of over
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand pounds about a million dollars. Where exactly
Speaker 1: had all that money come from? A journalist emailed Hannah
Speaker 1: to ask. She didn't reply. The muttering grew louder. Journalists
Speaker 1: asked more questions that official Captain Tom Limited Edition gin,
Speaker 1: for example, exactly how much of the purchase price went
Speaker 1: to the Captain Tom Foundation, Well, some of it, but
Speaker 1: how much the gin was quietly pulled from sale. Hannah
Speaker 1: began working as the interim CEO of the Captain Tom Foundation.
Speaker 1: She asked for a salary of one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand pounds a year, but the Charity Commission, which regulates
Speaker 1: charities in England, said that was too much for the
Speaker 1: CEO of a new small foundation. Eighty five thousand pounds
Speaker 1: should be plenty. That's still more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and nearly three times the average wage in the UK.
Speaker 1: Still a bit disappointing. Not to worry, though, there were
Speaker 1: other ways to make money. For example, Hannah made a
Speaker 1: deal to provide ambassador services for a media company's charity
Speaker 1: awards using Captain in Tom's name. It was later revealed
Speaker 1: the company paid twenty thousand pounds for these services, but
Speaker 1: just two thousand of that went to the Captain Tom Foundation.
Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand went to Hannah ingram Moore. Charities by law
Speaker 1: must have independent trustees who act in the charity's best interests.
Speaker 1: Both Hannah and her husband served for a time among
Speaker 1: the trustees for the Captain Tom Foundation. But were the
Speaker 1: foundation's trustees doing a good enough job the Charity Commission
Speaker 1: started to wander They set up an inquiry. Meanwhile, Hannah
Speaker 1: and her husband submitted a planning application to put up
Speaker 1: a new building in the garden of their big house.
Speaker 1: In English villages, you can't just build anything you like
Speaker 1: on land you own. Development is strictly controlled by the
Speaker 1: local god government. The ingram Moors applied for permission to
Speaker 1: build a Captain Tom Foundation building. It would be used
Speaker 1: for charitable purposes. How could the local bureaucrats refuse? Here's
Speaker 1: a curious thing though. When the building actually went up,
Speaker 1: neighbours noticed it was somewhat bigger than the plans for
Speaker 1: which permission had been given. Also, it contained a luxury spapool.
Speaker 1: How exactly was a spapool going to be used for
Speaker 1: charitable purposes? Well, it had the opportunity to offer rehabilitation
Speaker 1: sessions for elderly people in the area on a once
Speaker 1: or twice per week basis, said the ingram Moors, as
Speaker 1: they appealed to the local authority to grant them retrospective
Speaker 1: planning permission for the building they'd actually built. As the
Speaker 1: negative news stories piled up in twenty twenty three, Hannah
Speaker 1: and her husband decided they should do an interview. They
Speaker 1: turned to the broadcaster Piers Morgan. It was his donation
Speaker 1: that had kick started the initial fundraising drive in the
Speaker 1: first lockdown. He had defended them staunchly against the online
Speaker 1: trolls after Tom's death, But when they appeared on Piers
Speaker 1: Morgan uncensored, they soon discovered that Morgan wasn't going to
Speaker 1: pull his punches. It's very hard to argue that you
Speaker 1: need a spapool to pay tribute to your father. Morgan
Speaker 1: turned to the mysterious question of the eight hundred thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: Where exactly had that come from? The Ingram Moors tried
Speaker 1: to be vague. Morgan kept pushing. This is a really
Speaker 1: unfair line of questioning, said Hannah. She demanded that the
Speaker 1: cameras be turned off. When the cameras came back on again,
Speaker 1: Morgan had evidently persuaded them to answer. Most of the
Speaker 1: money had come from the book deal. Tom's autobiography Tomorrow
Speaker 1: Will be a Good Day have become a best seller.
Speaker 1: But shouldn't some of that money have gone to the charity,
Speaker 1: asked Morgan. No, said Hannah. It was my father's book.
Speaker 1: He wrote it. He was very clear about that. The regulator,
Speaker 1: the Charity Commission, published its investigation report in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Among other things, they considered the question of Tom's book,
Speaker 1: remember what he had written in the prologue. With the
Speaker 1: offer to write this memoir, I've also been given the
Speaker 1: chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation
Speaker 1: now established in my name. Emails from the time showed
Speaker 1: that the publishers expected some cash to go to the charity,
Speaker 1: and there was a press release too, published in support
Speaker 1: of the Captain Tom Foundation. The ingram More's argued that
Speaker 1: publication of Tom's autobiography did support the founder in the
Speaker 1: sense that it was prominently mentioned in news coverage of
Speaker 1: the book's launch that amounted to thousands of pounds worth
Speaker 1: of free advertising, promotion and media space. The Charity Commission
Speaker 1: didn't buy it, Their report says. The inquiry formerly wrote
Speaker 1: to mister and Missus ingram Moore to provide them with
Speaker 1: an opportunity to rectify matters by making a donation to
Speaker 1: the charity. They declined to do so. The inquiry looked
Speaker 1: at the Gin and the SPA and the deal with
Speaker 1: the media company. It found that there had been repeated
Speaker 1: instances of a blurring of boundaries between private and charitable interests,
Speaker 1: and repeated instances of misconduct and or mismanagement on the
Speaker 1: part of Hannah and her husband. The ingram wors had
Speaker 1: damaged public trust and confidence in charities generally. The broadcaster
Speaker 1: Piers Morgan tweeted his response to the report shameful. The
Speaker 1: singer Michael Ball recalled how incredibly proud he had been
Speaker 1: of his duet with Captain Tom and added to see
Speaker 1: it twisted. Really, it's a real shame. It's easy to
Speaker 1: criticize Hannah ingram Moore. Too easy, I want to suggest
Speaker 1: another villain of this story. You and me and everyone
Speaker 1: who's ever donated to a charity without pausing to ask
Speaker 1: what evidence exists that the charity is effective and well run.
Speaker 1: Just think back to April twenty twenty, when the British
Speaker 1: public were pledging millions upon millions of pounds inspired by
Speaker 1: the sight of an elderly veteran hobbling up and down
Speaker 1: his own garden. What did most of us know about
Speaker 1: how the network of NHS charities would use the money?
Speaker 1: Not much, and yet we gave anyway because giving felt good.
Speaker 1: No harm done. You might say, in this case, the
Speaker 1: charities probably use the money well, but the problem is
Speaker 1: the culture it creates. We give money to get a
Speaker 1: warm glow and don't give much thought to how the
Speaker 1: money will be spent. Later, when the fundraising effort moved
Speaker 1: to the brand new Captain Tom Foundation, what did we
Speaker 1: know about how this foundation would be run? Nothing? Yet
Speaker 1: some people gave anyway because giving felt good. In his
Speaker 1: book Doing Good Better, the philosopher Will McCaskill points out
Speaker 1: that the charity world often lacks effective feedback mechanisms. Invest
Speaker 1: in a bad company and you lose mone but give
Speaker 1: money to a bad charity and you probably won't hear
Speaker 1: about its failings, which may explain why Hannah Ingram Moore
Speaker 1: didn't see a problem with her plans. Bad charities crups
Speaker 1: on goodwill all the time. That said, there's not usually
Speaker 1: as much goodwill as there was for Captain Tom, and
Speaker 1: charities aren't usually quite as bad as the Captain Tom
Speaker 1: Foundation was. We can blame Hannah ingram More, of course,
Speaker 1: for giving in to the temptation to blur the boundaries
Speaker 1: between private and charitable interests. But if donors routinely did
Speaker 1: as much due diligence on charities as investors do on companies,
Speaker 1: that temptation might never have existed. The Captain Tom Foundation
Speaker 1: shut up shop. The Charity Commission disqualified Hannah and her
Speaker 1: husband from running or being a trustee of any but
Speaker 1: the Ingram Wors had one last ignominy to suffer. They'd
Speaker 1: appealed to the local authority for retrospective planning permission for
Speaker 1: their SPA building. The planners said no, it would have
Speaker 1: to be demolished. The media once again converged on the
Speaker 1: Ingram Moor's house with their cameras, this time to film
Speaker 1: an excavator knocking down a spa in the garden where
Speaker 1: Tom Moore had once inspired a nation, Now they a
Speaker 1: pile of rubble. Sometimes the metaphors right themselves. For a
Speaker 1: full list of our sources, see the show notes at
Speaker 1: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim
Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
Speaker 1: and original music are the work of the Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Additional sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Barry Wise, who provided the pieces on
Speaker 1: piano for this episode. Bender Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The
Speaker 1: show features the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford,
Speaker 1: Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp, massaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright.
Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work
Speaker 1: of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios
Speaker 1: in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes
Speaker 1: a difference to us and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: the show, add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on
Speaker 1: the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm,
Speaker 1: slash plus