A BEACON OF LIGHT ARISE SIR TOM!

An unlikely hero who emerged at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Captain Tom Moore has now become Captain Sir Tom Moore at the grand old age of 100!

When Captain Tom Moore embarked on a personal challenge to complete 100 laps of the garden in his Bedfordshire home before his 100th birthday, he was hoping he might garner enough local support to raise a modest £1,000 for the NHS. What happened next, his daughter Hannah recalls, was “unimaginable”.

Clutching his walking frame for support and proudly wearing his WWII medals, the war veteran’s steely determination to keep lapping his garden, come rain or shine, quickly captured the hearts of wellwishers worldwide.

Donations, tributes and national news interviews poured in. By the time his 100th birthday (marked with a Spitfire flyover and more than 120,000 cards from fans around the globe) came around, Captain Moore’s status as a national hero was cemented.

His JustGiving page has raised an incredible £32 million in donations, while the charity single he released with Michael Ball made him the oldest artist to claim a UK No 1.

“I had no idea it would be that popular,” said Captain Moore of his fundraising effort. “It was just an idea within the family initially - walking up and down for exercise - but then it just grew and grew.”

“We’re just an ordinary family really. We knew we had a lovely story to share, and we shared it with the world willingly,” says Hannah, who initially put together a short press release about her father’s charity walk, which was in tribute to the NHS nurses who cared for him after he fractured his hip two years ago.

“We thought that maybe local radio would be interested and that it would be great to raise a thousand pounds. The extraordinary journey we’ve gone through could never have been imagined.”