Sunday, April 12
‘Can you do 100 laps of your garden, Piers?’ read a tweet to me today from someone named Captain Tom Moore.
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at until I discovered he’s a 99-year-old Second World War veteran who is walking 100 laps of HIS garden before his 100th birthday on April 30 – to raise cash for the NHS.
‘Can you do 100 laps of your garden, Piers?’ read a tweet to me from someone named Captain Tom Moore. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at until I discovered he’s a 99-year-old Second World War veteran who is walking 100 laps of HIS garden before his 100th birthday on April 30 – to raise cash for the NHS
Apparently, he originally hoped to make £1,000 but his endeavour’s gone viral and money’s now pouring in.
‘Haha, no, Tom!’ I responded. ‘Love what you’re doing – keep pounding.’
Then I told the Good Morning Britain team to book him for tomorrow’s show.
Monday, April 13
By the time Susanna and I spoke to him, Captain Tom’s JustGiving donations page had soared to £350,000, and he had a new target of £500k.
He explained his motivation: ‘When our nurses go in to work at the moment,’ he said, ‘they must feel like Daniel going into the lions’ den because they don’t know what’s going to happen, but they know they’re in for a pretty tough day and by gum they’re brave.’
Captain Tom, appearing with his daughter Hannah, whom he has lived with since his wife Pamela died in 2006, added: ‘In the war, we had to carry on whatever was going on and we knew eventually we were going to win and it’s the same with this virus. There’s no doubt we’re on the winning side. We shall survive and we shall all get through it well in the end.’
This rousing rallying cry to the nation moved me so much that I told Captain Tom I’d donate £10,000 myself and urged viewers to chip in too.
Within four hours of our interview, he’d reached the £500k.
‘I can’t thank you enough, sir,’ a delighted Tom tweeted me (I suspect with a bit of help!), ‘hats off!’
‘Hey, Captain Tom,’ I replied, ‘why stop at 500k? Let’s go for £1m.’
Tuesday, April 14
I interviewed Captain Tom again as his total reached £900k.
‘It’s marvellous that so many kind people are helping those on the front line,’ he said with typical modesty. ‘Our army in this war are wearing nurse and doctor uniforms.’
Captain Tom surged past £1 million a few minutes after we came off air, and carried on surging all day to £4 million by midnight, with people from all around the world joining in.
The last time I was involved in anything like this was in 2009 when Susan Boyle’s audition aired on Britain’s Got Talent and within a few days had got 300 million views online.
Like Susan, Captain Tom’s most admirable quality is his humility.
Wednesday, April 15
‘I’d like to see the magnificently inspiring Captain Tom be knighted for his services to his country in WW2 and now to the NHS,’ I tweeted. ‘Who’s with me?’
An incredible 89,000 people liked the tweet within hours, showing just how much this doggedly determined, charming old man has inspired us all.
Thursday, April 16
Captain Tom’s now raised £12 million, making him the biggest single fundraiser in JustGiving history.
‘This is absurd!’ I told him when he came back on GMB again.
‘It certainly is!’ he agreed.
Hannah told him about my knighthood campaign, which made several newspaper front pages today.
‘I’ve never anticipated anything like that,’ he chuckled. ‘Our Queen is perfect, and we should all be so proud of her.’
‘If she did knight you,’ I asked, ‘what would you say to her?’
‘I would say, “Your Majesty, this is the greatest honour anyone could get, because you are such a marvellous person,” and then I would remind her that she and I both served in her father’s army in the war.’
As for this war, Captain Tom remained resolute: ‘The future is in front of us all, and things will get better and we will get through this very difficult time. We’ve fought so many battles as a country and we’ve always won, and this time we will win again. Remember, tomorrow will be a good day.’ There’s something so extraordinarily powerful about his simple but inspiring and hopeful rhetoric.
Captain Tom passed his 100 laps later in the morning but vowed to keep going: ‘I’ll continue walking as long as people are generous enough to donate to the NHS.’
Saturday, April 18
I suggested on GMB last week that Katherine Jenkins rerelease her duet with Dame Vera Lynn of We’ll Meet Again, after the Queen used that line in her address to the nation.
So she did, and it went to No 1 in the iTunes chart, prompting Katherine to send me a bottle of champagne today inscribed with the words: ‘To Piers, congrats on your first Number 1 single, another great idea of yours! Love Jenko.’
Before I could even open it to celebrate, Captain Tom’s duet with Michael Ball (and the NHS Voices of Care Choir) of You’ll Never Walk Alone knocked it off the top.
Is there nothing this man can’t do?
‘Captain Tom deserves it all,’ Katherine chuckled when I told her. ‘What a legend.’
You know these are truly unprecedented times when the two biggest pop stars in the country have a combined age of 202!
Monday, April 20
Captain Tom reappeared on GMB again today as his total passed £27 million, and revealed that Boris Johnson has called him, England cricket captain and fellow Yorkshireman Joe Root sent him his World Cup-winning shirt, and Dame Vera Lynn wrote him a letter of thanks. ‘That meant so much because she is my heroine,’ he said. ‘She came and sang to us when we were in Burma in the war and it was great for our morale.’
Now HE is singing, and walking, for us in THIS war, and it’s been great for OUR morale.
Thank you, Captain Tom.