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00:01One day, a man went for a walk to raise some money for the NHS.
00:07One little soul like me isn't going to make much difference.
00:12One hundred lengths of his garden later,
00:15and Captain Tom Moore had raised tens of millions of pounds
00:20and become a global inspiration.
00:23Hi Tom, Ben Stokes here.
00:25What you've managed to achieve is absolutely fantastic.
00:27You inspired me.
00:28I just wanted to send a huge congratulations.
00:30If we as a country can show the same spirit of optimism
00:34shown by Captain Tom Moore, we will beat it.
00:39How have you been handling the attention?
00:41Because the attention has been incredible.
00:44I must say, I rather enjoyed it.
00:47An array of honours culminated with Her Majesty the Queen
00:51coming out of lockdown to especially award Captain Tom a knighthood.
00:58And now, for the first time, Captain Sir Tom will delve into a century of memories.
01:04We'll tell some of the secrets.
01:07Not all of them.
01:09He'll tell his very personal history of Britain,
01:12and the moments that made him the man he is today.
01:15I was left with no job, no qualifications.
01:20Sex and miniskirts all seemed to go together.
01:24The person I married had gone.
01:27This is the story of a national hero who was 100 years in the making.
01:34Well, I'm ready when you are.
01:36Tom Moore's hometown is Keithley in West Yorkshire.
01:51I was born on the 30th of April of 1920,
01:55but I don't think my life starts there.
01:57It starts before that.
01:59I think you've got to go back to my grandfather.
02:08The original Tom Moore, who could never read or write.
02:16He must have been up in the Dales doing an awful lot of dry stone walling.
02:23But Thomas Moore was a Yorkshireman with ambition.
02:28He started up a building company in Keithley.
02:32He progressed very well, considering that he had very little schooling.
02:37He was a very determined man.
02:44I mean, don't forget, in the world that Captain Tom was born into,
02:47the vast majority of people never went to university
02:49and never dreamed of going to university.
02:51So if you wanted to progress, you had to do so
02:54by your own kind of practical efforts.
02:58You know, the 20s and 30s were a great age of building.
03:02This was a great age of the suburbs.
03:05You're building houses for all these people
03:08who've come home from the First World War.
03:11So the demand for master builders was great.
03:15There's a lot of money to be made.
03:19Tom's grandfather learned the engineering techniques
03:22necessary to become a master builder.
03:25He constructed houses all around Keithley.
03:28We built a lot of houses up here.
03:30Including a large home for his own family called Club Nook.
03:34which still stands today.
03:36But this wasn't the crowning achievement of the man
03:39with no formal education.
03:41In fact, the war memorial in the centre of the town
03:46was built by my grandfather.
03:48This was one of the first war memorials in Britain,
03:53opened in 1924 to a packed-out crowd.
03:58It wasn't the only thing to admire about old Thomas More.
04:03I think people liked him.
04:07In his own way, he believed in women's rights.
04:10Some of the men, if they got the money,
04:12they went straight to the pub.
04:14And their poor wives had little to manage with.
04:17But my grandfather insisted they got some money in their hand.
04:22Often women had no economic power at all.
04:25They didn't have a bank account.
04:27They didn't have their own separate savings.
04:29They didn't even exist as an independent financial entity.
04:32To be insisting that the women, that the wives,
04:37get some of that money is very enlightened, actually,
04:42by the standards of the day.
04:43Captain Tom's father, Wilfred,
04:49also worked in the family building business.
04:52I couldn't have had a nicer father than he was,
04:56although there was a big drawback
04:59that he and I could never have long conversations together
05:04because my father was extremely deaf.
05:08It was always very difficult for him.
05:11The one thing Tom could enjoy with his deaf father
05:16was a trip to the silent movies.
05:19And that was the picture house,
05:21which was the premier cinema of the town.
05:26It went very well.
05:30It's an extraordinary thing that we've lost sight of, actually,
05:33just how important cinemas were to people.
05:37Picture palaces.
05:39Of course, people didn't have TVs.
05:41The cinema was a glimpse of another universe,
05:45steeped in glamour and stardust and excitement and so on.
05:49And cinema attendances in Britain are enormous between the wars.
05:53You can't overestimate, actually,
05:56the importance of the Picture Palace
05:58in kind of forming the culture of the day.
06:00Of course, in black and white,
06:03and the other ones there was no sound.
06:05There was maybe simply playing a piano.
06:08And we used to watch things like cowboy ones.
06:12At that time, it was a series.
06:14Every week you had to go.
06:16I've always liked Westerns because the good ones always win.
06:22Tom's personality isn't just a product of his father's side of the family.
06:29That's my mother here on the right.
06:33My mother was the headmistress of a little village school.
06:38My mother and father have not been unkind,
06:43but my mother was the brighter of the two.
06:53A very happy childhood.
06:56I wasn't brought teddy bears or anything.
06:58I was brought things that were practical,
07:01that were useful as you grew older.
07:07My father would bring me presents,
07:09a piece of wood and some nails and a hammer,
07:12or a bigger hammer.
07:15I'm quite right, too.
07:19Tom raised his own daughters, Lucy,
07:21and Hannah, with whom he now lives,
07:23in exactly the same way.
07:25For your birthday, you'd get a set of tools.
07:27Yeah, I remember.
07:28I mean, that's why you have a very good tool set now.
07:31I do, yeah.
07:32But I remember you making me go under the car to change the oil.
07:35Yeah.
07:42Nobody encouraged Tom's practical skills
07:44more than his father's brother,
07:46perhaps the most influential character of his entire childhood.
07:54Yes, Sergeant?
07:55Uncle Billy.
07:58Billy Moore was part of a group of daredevil Yorkshiremen and women
08:01who were the pioneers of extreme sports.
08:09Whether it was biplanes or motorcycles,
08:11the tougher the challenge, the bigger the thrill.
08:19Motorbikes were Britain's most popular form of working-class transport.
08:23Between the wars, there were 300 different manufacturers,
08:27and Uncle Billy rode Scots made in Yorkshire.
08:31His antics often made the local press.
08:36Such was Billy's riding ability
08:38that one of his favourite tricks
08:40was to ride across the local canal on a plank
08:44only six inches wide.
08:47He was also seen riding through town
08:50while reading a newspaper,
08:52seemingly with perfect control of the machine.
08:56He'd do that for effect.
08:58Yeah.
08:59Yeah, true.
09:00Yeah, true.
09:01Yeah.
09:02The ultimate test was the Scott trial,
09:04a timed event held over Yorkshire's harshest terrain.
09:08I've got something to show you.
09:10This is about motorcycles.
09:12Grandson Benji shares some original footage of the event.
09:16This is Scott trial, yes.
09:17Young Tom learnt that what most called a severe challenge,
09:21others considered entertainment.
09:23These fellows say they do it for fun.
09:26I wouldn't do it for a thousand pounds.
09:28Ninety-year-old memories that are still fresh.
09:32I remember most of these places.
09:35And that was a park around Cattlewell.
09:39Competitions like this attracted huge crowds.
09:45Uncle Billy excelled.
09:49He was very skilled.
09:52He was a wizard.
09:54He won so many times
09:57that a Billy Moore Cup
09:59is still awarded today
10:01to the best-placed Yorkshireman on the Scott trial.
10:07Tom's uncle was a local hero.
10:13He was very fond of me.
10:15I mean, we got on extremely well.
10:18My father named his dogs after Billy,
10:21and he was an incredibly important person in his life.
10:27As a boy, I spent a lot of time with him.
10:30It wasn't long before Tom wanted a piece of the action himself.
10:35My first motorcycle I found in a barn,
10:39and I bought for half a crown.
10:42His tires were flat.
10:44It was covered in dust and didn't run.
10:47You know, I was 12.
10:50Not boasting, but I'd been brought up with motorbikes.
10:56And on my own, without anybody's help, I got it run.
11:02And ran in the field.
11:04Nobody came and gave me a help.
11:06They just assumed they'd do it.
11:08And they didn't.
11:09We all know how it feels when you first drive,
11:12and you think,
11:13I have freedom, I'm independent.
11:15He got that at 12.
11:19With his dog, Billy,
11:20he was able to roam the moors
11:22and be who he wanted to be.
11:24If ever my father was talking about his motorcycle years,
11:28he would light up.
11:29He absolutely loved being on a motorcycle.
11:33But the happy childhood that had taught Tom
11:36about hard work, fairness,
11:38practical skill and independence
11:40was about to deliver heartbreaking family tragedy.
11:44Very, very sad.
12:00Captain Tom Moore's charity walk
12:02took place during three whirlwind weeks in April.
12:06Four months later,
12:07and the family are still dealing
12:09with all the gifts that were sent.
12:12So this is George, and that's Dave.
12:15Hello.
12:16And they've been coming every week
12:18to take all the recycling away.
12:20Well done.
12:21Thank you very much.
12:23Nice to meet you.
12:24OK.
12:26Bye bye.
12:27Bye bye.
12:29It's quite interesting.
12:32Things happening around me are different.
12:34But inside here, nothing's changed.
12:37I'm still the same Tom Moore as I was.
12:42That's a Tom Moore who was born and bred in the Yorkshire Dales.
12:48Behind each of these century-old photographs
12:51of his hometown, Keithley,
12:53lies another treasured memory waiting to be unlocked.
12:57It brings me back.
13:00I think this is interesting because one of the presents that my father gave me was a half-plate camera.
13:08There's a doorway there with steps which lead up to up there.
13:12And that was held by the Keithley Photographic Association.
13:16I was a member and used to go up there to develop films.
13:21Not that this thoroughly modern man believes everything was better in the good old days.
13:28What's the possible trouble when you got one of the other and this will do all that any of that would do ten times over?
13:41The Keithley Photographic Association searched their archives for any photos Tom may have taken.
13:49They found none, but they did find an old shoebox full of prints labelled Wilfred Moore, Tom's father,
13:57which Tom is now seeing for the very first time.
14:02That's my father's signature around.
14:06It's an unintentional father's gift made in 1920.
14:10You knew I was born.
14:12Delivered to his son 100 years later.
14:18Yes, there. That's my father there.
14:23I don't think I've seen him looking as young as that.
14:26I went just to see my father there.
14:35That's, that's my father.
14:38Very good. Marvellous.
14:41Tom's father documented daily life in all its forms.
14:45Funny potato.
14:47George was the fifth. King George was the fifth.
14:57And the queen.
15:02There's one subject in this remarkable time capsule that is inevitable.
15:07Motorcycles.
15:09Because I've still got an accessory in a headland.
15:11Tom's mechanically minded family loved motorbikes and the competitions that took place across Yorkshire's unforgiving terrain.
15:21A young Tom idolised his Uncle Billy, one of the most famous riders.
15:32Sadly, in 1935, this colourful character met a tragic end.
15:37He was working on his car in the garage.
15:42And he stayed there too long.
15:45And the fumes got him.
15:51My father and I had to get him out of his car in his garage.
15:57And carry him in the house.
15:58And carry him in the house.
15:59So, at 15, I carried a dead Billy into his house.
16:04So, I mean, I have that recollection that not the happiest one.
16:14Did you miss him when he was gone?
16:15Yes, I did, yes.
16:18Very much so, yes.
16:20Very, very sad.
16:21Very sad.
16:35Aren't they good?
16:37Captain Tom received 170 portraits as thank you gifts from members of the public.
16:44It's amazing.
16:45That's good because it's got all the medals on them.
16:48Yes.
16:50The paintings will be catalogued and displayed in an online gallery.
16:54You name it, we've had it.
16:56Some sweets, chocolates, pictures.
17:00Nearly all of them are perfect.
17:03They really are very good indeed.
17:05They're recognisable and you know who it is.
17:09Yes, I think some of them are very good.
17:11I mean, that one goes back.
17:13That was when I was just being commissioned as a second lieutenant.
17:17I don't look like that now, but I did.
17:20I managed to get by with some of the girls all right.
17:34War broke out in 1939 and Tom was conscripted into the Duke of Wellington's regiment at the age of 20.
17:42But he wasn't the only Moor to go to war.
17:45I got a sister, Frieda, who was two years older than me.
17:52She was a plotter in Lincolnshire, plotting the German plane.
18:00Tom's sister volunteered to help coordinate the RAF fighters that shot down German aircraft over Britain.
18:07Wars weapons now engaged.
18:08Meanwhile, in Tom's hometown, more than one million pounds was raised for the war effort, proving record-breaking fundraising is something of a tradition for people from Keithley.
18:24But by now, Tom was in a different world.
18:30He was posted 7,000 miles away to India and the multinational 14th Army who fought in the brutal Burma campaign.
18:40There he faced the savage Japanese army, as well as monsoon conditions, stifling heat and virulent tropical disease.
18:56It was one of World War II's harshest environments.
19:01It was unpleasant.
19:03I was at the forefront with the Indian Army.
19:09We were under fire constantly.
19:14The motorbike skills Tom learned in the Yorkshire Dales served him well when he was entrusted to deliver vital messages.
19:21The only way of getting to the front from the tanks was on a motorcycle through several miles of jungle, which fell to me.
19:32Tom was riding through a war zone riddled with hidden enemy soldiers.
19:37I was on a 21 or 22.
19:40You don't get very frightened at 22.
19:45During a three-year posting, he went on to train other dispatch riders in the regiment, which provided some welcome respite.
19:52Being an opportunist, when I ran this motorcycle course, I decided that passing out test, we would go to Bombay and have a night in Bombay and come home again.
20:17It so happened that Sylvia lived in Bombay.
20:23She was a pretty girl.
20:27She'd been brought up in India and kept running these courses and I ensured that each course finished at a weekend.
20:36I knew the British boys would look after themselves.
20:40I looked after Sylvia.
20:41Yes.
20:42So that was quite a happy little thing.
20:45Sylvia was happy.
20:48The brigadier was happy.
20:50I was happy.
20:52The brigadier was happy.
20:54I was happy.
20:56The work went on very well.
21:00I enjoyed the army.
21:03Today, the honorary colonel is receiving his freshly restored medals, along with an impressive
21:10addition.
21:12Without further ado.
21:15There we go.
21:16Let's have a look.
21:20Look at that.
21:22And if you look, there's another layer underneath as well.
21:26Look at the miniatures.
21:27Miniatures, yes.
21:29We've added your knight's bachelor badge.
21:31That's your knighthood badge.
21:33That's super, thank you very much.
21:34Honours continue to be awarded, a level of recognition that makes the builder's son just a little emotional.
21:44Yes, I mean, I think my grandfather would have, he would have been quietly very pleased.
21:53I mean, and my father, he would have been delighted.
21:57And if he's still up there hearing it, he would be absolutely delighted.
22:02Of all the people in the family who would be pleased with my father.
22:07This attention is a far cry from the situation Tom found himself in 75 years ago.
22:17After the war, Tom was back in Yorkshire and searching for work.
22:22Post-war Britain was a very grey and gloomy place.
22:29We had five or six years of austerity.
22:32Rationing gets worse after the war than it had been during the war.
22:37The country is hugely indebted, and I think there was a real sense of exhaustion.
22:42I was left with no job, with no qualifications that anybody wanted.
22:48So, I got a job as a labourer in a quarry.
22:54And although I say to myself, I was the best labourer they'd ever had.
22:59It wasn't long before I was using explosives.
23:05At a Keithley quarry, they're getting ready for the big blast.
23:08That wasn't the job I intended to. I took a job selling books at people's doors.
23:23It was woman's own.
23:28Women's magazines are a kind of how-to guide for this sort of shiny new consumer society
23:32that Britain is building in the post-war years.
23:36You have door-to-door salesmen because you have a much more affluent society
23:42with hugely rising wages and living standards.
23:45And you have these housewives who decide what the family budget goes on.
23:51And basically, you're going to the house to sort of confront them in their lair
23:55and to extract their money from them.
23:58That's what you were doing. You had to con them.
24:01It was a soul-destroying job.
24:04I was too kind-hearted.
24:06I couldn't really bear to take money off these ladies.
24:11Tom headed south to find his fortune
24:14and went back to the building trade.
24:15I started selling roofing materials for a company in Gravesend.
24:22You know, I was quite good at that.
24:26I was intent on going up and up and up.
24:32He joined another building firm
24:35and was soon rewarded with more responsibility.
24:38I was covering north of England and Northern Ireland.
24:42Tom was in his 30s and in a vibrant new era
24:47heralded by the Queen's coronation of 1953.
24:51Britain, with its 25-year-old monarch, was modernising.
24:59Britain in the 50s, a country that was being transformed by the car.
25:04Many more people had cars than they ever had them before.
25:07And, of course, the roads weren't made for cars.
25:09You know, they were arrayed for horses and carts and so on.
25:13That's when you start to see the wholesale sort of redevelopment
25:17of a lot of town centres to make room for cars.
25:20But you also see the government realising
25:22they've got to do something about motorways.
25:24And you have the opening of the M1 in 1959.
25:27Yes, I went on that, merely to see what it was like.
25:33There was very little traffic on it.
25:38You just have to drive flat out on there, I mean,
25:42foot down and just keep it there.
25:44And which company car did Tom enjoy driving the most?
25:47A British icon, the Mini.
25:50They were fantastic little cars.
25:53You could drive them flat out for as long as you like.
25:56You could quite easily lift a rear wheel going round corners.
26:01I was only picked up for speeding twice, but I should have been picked up hundreds of times.
26:13I was constantly driving above the speed.
26:16Because I was in a hurry, I was going somewhere.
26:18Occasionally, I had to go to head office to have meetings.
26:28And it so happened there was rather a pretty young lady
26:33who was the office manager in Gravesend.
26:37All right.
26:39Little did Tom know that this was a woman who was going to change his life forever.
26:44Forever.
26:59Morning. Morning.
27:01Do you sleep well?
27:03Yes, I'm clear.
27:05Yes, very well, thank you.
27:07Good morning, Wendy.
27:09Daily life for Captain Sir Tom is returning to normal.
27:12But he'll never get used to the fortune he raised for NHS charities.
27:18It's an enormous sum of money, isn't it?
27:24Can you imagine 40 million or whatever, in a big pile, what it would look like?
27:33Doesn't come to me, unfortunately.
27:34He seems to personify virtues that we think we've lost.
27:41With his wartime background and with his longevity and as a family man and all the rest of it,
27:47he became the kind of perfect avatar of what we would like to think that Britain could be.
27:54Always had Boris for breakfast. Always. Without Jane.
27:59He's like a sort of secular version of the Queen.
28:05We were in this time of great crisis and anxiety and people looked to him and they said,
28:10you know, there's a kind of Britishness that reminds us that we will prevail and we'll come through this.
28:18My nose is licking time.
28:22Tom Moore, the building materials salesman, would find it all very hard to believe.
28:30Throughout the fifties and sixties, he worked long and hard.
28:36If I had to do the extra mile, I did it.
28:39I just was intent on making progress.
28:43Because there's a bit more in your pocket.
28:46He specialised in a cheap and versatile material, concrete.
28:51I supplied the concrete block facing for the new flower market at Covent Garden.
28:56And I went out to help Barcelona Airport being built.
29:05Business was looking up.
29:07But back in Britain, a helping hand was needed.
29:11You've got a huge economic boom in Britain in the fifties and sixties,
29:15but you don't have enough labour.
29:17It's as simple as that.
29:19So there is a huge demand for unskilled, cheap labour.
29:23And the place that fulfils that demand is the Commonwealth.
29:29So the West Indies, India and Pakistan.
29:35And you have this huge influx.
29:38Hundreds of thousands of people.
29:40And they go to areas where there's the work.
29:42So they go to London.
29:43They go to the West Midlands, to the engineering and so on.
29:49And they go to places like West Yorkshire, to the mills.
29:52Tom was now a manager in Gravesend.
29:57Having been to India, I was used to Indian.
30:02I was the first person in the town to employ a Pakistani.
30:07And there was resistance amongst the other workers against him to begin with.
30:13Eventually he accepted the murder was all right, but initially there was resistance.
30:19I think that all immigrants into this country should be controlled.
30:23Half of them are coming over here without jobs.
30:26Consequently, they're making it very hard for our armed people to find jobs.
30:29Britain was a society in which a lot of people had never seen a non-white person.
30:34You know, they'd been raised with an unthinking sense of superiority.
30:40And a whole set of attitudes that now would seem quite shocking.
30:44And so, I think particularly when the economy starts to stutter,
30:48and people are looking for scapegoats,
30:50then the new immigrant population sort of becomes a target.
30:57The West Indians, they were super workers.
31:01They worked and they worked and they worked.
31:03They all work hard.
31:05If we, the coloured people, can meet the English people on their own level,
31:09in discussion, in relationship,
31:12I think the harmony will be better.
31:14Personally, I think so.
31:27The cultural revolution that Tom witnessed in 60s Britain took many forms.
31:33Well, she loves you.
31:34Well, she loves you.
31:36Well, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:39The youngsters were having a swing time.
31:42Anything happened, anything went.
31:44Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:47Sex and miniscuits all seemed to go together.
31:50Woo!
31:51So, the common view of the 60s is that this is this age of tremendous change.
31:58It's Carnaby Street, it's James Bond and the Beatles and all the rest of it.
32:02And there is an element of truth in that.
32:05But, of course, for most people, the 60s didn't really swing at all.
32:10I mean, free love was okay, fine.
32:14Did you manage to partake in free love in the 60s?
32:18No, no, I was far too busy.
32:24The 60s was an era, for most people, of kind of bingo, Blackpool and Bernie Inns.
32:30You know, did the 60s arrive in Hull?
32:33They did in 1987.
32:43By 1968, 48-year-old Tom was a successful businessman working in London.
32:49But there was still something missing.
32:51His mind went back to Pamela, the office manager he'd once encountered.
32:56I thought, that's a good idea, that one.
33:00And I got more and more attached to this young lady in the office management.
33:08The relationship blossomed and eventually I married her.
33:13No going down on one knee or anything fancy like that.
33:17She was 15 years younger than me.
33:20Her family, generally, weren't very happy about it.
33:25You don't have Yorkshiremen in you, and suddenly, again, they're animals.
33:30They don't speak proper, so...
33:33Well, because I'm very well, Mamie, she thought,
33:37anything's better than nothing.
33:41In short order, Tom and Pamela started a family.
33:44We'd just got married in time.
33:47Close enough people hadn't done the sums properly, so they hadn't worked it out.
33:52Otherwise, there were some who'd disapproved.
33:56But what did I care?
33:58Nothing.
34:00A year later, man was on the moon.
34:04The spirit of exploration pervaded Britain's and Tom's family life.
34:08For our summer holiday, he would go into planning weeks before.
34:13We drove to Italy, and we drove to France, and we drove to Spain.
34:19It's a real early memory, right, of being exposed to other languages and other cultures.
34:24It was high adventure, always.
34:27They were both of them taught to do practical things,
34:32changing light bulbs, hammers and nails, as I was.
34:36No, they were brought up to be practical, and they are, both of them.
34:40We learnt to drive footlifts.
34:42Navigation was his absolute thing,
34:45so I've been brought up with navigation and maps,
34:48always trying to give us skills.
34:50It was all part of a plan.
34:52Realising he was much older than the average dad,
34:56Tom was equipping his daughters for the future.
34:59His goal was, by the time we were 15 or 16,
35:03that if he wasn't around, we were ready to take on the world.
35:07And I think it worked, because I did feel like that.
35:13Meanwhile, Tom was making more strides in the business world.
35:16In 1983, now working for a Cambridge concrete company,
35:21he led a management buyout, raising the equivalent of £1 million in today's money,
35:27and saving jobs at one of the area's biggest employers.
35:31He saved it. Extraordinary.
35:34I remember him with all the spreadsheets on the table.
35:37And they were laid out end to end, whilst he was working it all out.
35:43Within a few years, the company had been revitalised,
35:46and Tom sold out, just before the financial crash of 1987.
35:51And came out of there quite well off.
35:56Tom, now 67, and his wife Pamela, moved to the Costa del Sol,
36:01part of a mass migration to Spain by Brits seeking warmer weather.
36:06He was looking forward to a tranquil retirement with the girl of his dreams.
36:11But it was not to be.
36:13Pamela fell seriously ill, and they had to return home.
36:18Pamela, as showing signs, has not been very well mentally.
36:24It was a degenerative brain disorder.
36:30Some of her behaviour changed.
36:33It was very obvious that she was deteriorating.
36:36You know, within a year she was in hospital,
36:39and because he couldn't cope with her at home,
36:41she really had deteriorated very badly.
36:45Totally tragic.
36:47It was a real moment in life,
36:50to have that moment with your father,
36:51to realise that his wife, my mother,
36:55was never going to come back.
36:58He visited her every day for five years,
37:01in that, in where she was.
37:03Every single day he went, without fail, to see her.
37:07I had a contract, hadn't I?
37:10You know, sickness and health, I found a contract.
37:15It's the most horrific thing to watch.
37:17And you go through loss every day,
37:22because you know every day they're going away a little bit further.
37:26When she actually died, it was a happy release for all of us.
37:32I mean, I didn't spend years, you know, moaning about it,
37:37because the person I married had gone a long time before.
37:48What can you do?
37:50You either become a victim or you charge forward,
37:54and that's what we did.
37:56He just got on with it.
37:57You've just got to get on with it and do it,
38:00and see what happens.
38:03And Tom's next chapter was perhaps the most extraordinary,
38:08but also one where he nearly died.
38:12Did I think he would survive it in all honesty?
38:15No, I don't think we did.
38:16One, two, three, one, two, three.
38:17No, no, no, no.
38:18No, don't do that.
38:20There's a lot of background.
38:21I don't know if you want to, if you can, move it to Hannah,
38:22your right.
38:24Another day, another virtual awards ceremony.
38:27All right.
38:29We're all set.
38:31I'm Hannah, by the way.
38:32Oh, no, I can't hear it.
38:33Oh, no, I can't hear it.
38:35After his wife, Pamela, died in 2006,
38:39Tom moved in with his daughter Hannah and her family.
38:42He stayed very active, holidaying alone into his 90s,
38:46first by visiting India and then Nepal.
38:48It's a marvellous country.
38:50You're looking over on the Imelais.
38:55Has you marched, the world watched?
38:57I had a flight in a fairly small plane
39:01and circled Mount Everest.
39:02It's a marvellous country, looking over on the Himalayas.
39:07As you marched, the world watched.
39:10I had a flight in a fairly small plane and circled Mount Everest,
39:17you know, Little Peak, amongst hundreds of other peaks.
39:21So all your new friends in the Guild of Freeman.
39:24I don't know whether it brought into your mind or not,
39:27but it didn't do you any harm.
39:29Captain Sir Tom.
39:31Captain Sir Tom.
39:32Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed.
39:36I don't think he's ever retired, has he, really? Let's be really honest.
39:40I think that life never stopped turning for him.
39:44We've got six acres here, and up until really recently, he by himself mowed it.
39:49He's also been a very good cook.
39:51You know, he's the one that would get on and cook the Sunday lunch.
39:56Great Yorkshire pudding.
39:58All from his grandmother's cookbook that is 119 years old,
40:03listing everything from sheep's tongue to lamb's brain in its ingredients.
40:08The only thing that you didn't use of a pig was its squeak.
40:13But the active lifestyle came to an abrupt halt 18 months ago.
40:20Throughout his charity walk, Tom hid the fact that movement is painful,
40:25the result of a near-fatal accident.
40:28I was in the kitchen, doing no harm to anybody.
40:33I was unloading the dishwasher, and somehow I got tangled up with my own feet,
40:42and I fell down and hit my head against the dishwasher.
40:49I fell on this hip and fractured this hip, and that was really where the trouble started.
40:58So I was in hospital for quite some time.
41:05Tom had broken ribs and punctured a lung.
41:08He couldn't breathe properly.
41:10The family prepared for the worst.
41:14For a good few days, it was really touch and go, really touch and go.
41:18Did I think he would survive it in all honesty?
41:21No, I don't think we did.
41:23It was very painful, yes.
41:25But I survived and came out all right.
41:30By way of rehab, Tom bought himself a treadmill.
41:34I bought that, yes.
41:37I didn't tell them what I was doing, I just went and got it.
41:41I don't walk about easily.
41:46It's still quite a problem.
41:49But maybe one day it will get better.
41:55And things got a little better sooner than Tom thought.
41:59When the vintage motorcycle community heard Tom's lifelong passion was for motorbikes,
42:05they arranged a bike show in his back garden, with examples of his favourite machines.
42:12And the best part, it was all a complete surprise.
42:17Tom was reunited with his darling bikes for the first time in 50 years.
42:24Magnificent.
42:26You say I'm a motorcycle fanatic?
42:31Still a beautiful one.
42:33When you see the photographs of him on a motorcycle, he looked really happy.
42:38Maybe he couldn't have any water.
42:41There's no way he could get some water.
42:44You're a ****, isn't it?
42:47Yes, it was a great bike.
42:49Thank you very much.
42:50I really appreciate it, because you've got that magnificent trio, really have.
42:55I'm absolutely thrilled to see these.
42:57And each one's only special in its way.
43:00Thank you very much.
43:01Thank you very much indeed.
43:02A great honour.
43:04And it didn't stop there.
43:06World champion Dougie Lampkin, born in the next village to Tom,
43:10and a winner of the Billy Moore Cup, dedicated to Tom's beloved uncle,
43:14gave him his own personal display.
43:17Good morning, sir.
43:18He's showing off now.
43:19Have you ever seen him on television?
43:22He wrote things which are impossible.
43:27You don't realise how skillful it is till you try and do it.
43:36Sounds lovely.
43:39Beautiful.
43:41It sounds like it's running on one cylinder.
43:46There was one more contraption, even older than Tom.
43:51What's next, then?
43:55This was the 100-year-old biker's chance to go for just one more ride.
44:01That's another nice bike.
44:05One funny way you can think of him is as a time traveller.
44:07I bought that in Burma.
44:09Really?
44:10Yeah.
44:11Wow.
44:13About 1943.
44:14He's come further than almost all of us.
44:17As somebody who's lived so long, what they often have that so many of us don't have
44:21is a sense of perspective.
44:23Are we ready?
44:26It's a lovely thing.
44:27It really is a lovely thing.
44:29You know, they've seen the wheel of fortune turn.
44:32Reputations rise and fall.
44:33Fads come and go.
44:36And I think as time goes on, you become a little bit more seasoned.
44:40Less stride, less hysterical.
44:42We're going a bit fast for you, are we?
44:44A bit fast for me?
44:45Yes.
44:47You know, that's, I think, what the experience of years gives you.
44:49In 1925, when I was five, I could never imagine things that's happening now.
45:00That was absolutely wonderful.
45:01I never thought I'd be taking you for a ride out on a motorbike.
45:04I never thought you'd be taking me for a ride either.
45:06We've got so many down people who think, oh, it's terrible, but it isn't.
45:13Things are going to get better. They really are.
45:17So what is Captain Sir Tom going to do next?
45:20Well, he's writing his memoirs, taking it very seriously.
45:24And then he wants to fix his hip so that he can get back on the mower.
45:31It's been a very interesting 12 weeks, and today's been an exceptionally good day.
45:39I mean, it really has.
45:40And is there any sign he'll now put his feet up?
45:45Of course not.
46:10But his latest life is, since his new dream, he's a great enemy.
46:12We hope to be the next one.
46:13Let's see.
46:14Let's hear it.
46:17I love it.
46:18I love it.
46:19I love it.
46:21We love it.
46:22I love it.
46:24We love it.
46:26I love it.
46:27We love it.
46:29I love it.
46:30I love it.
46:35I love it.
46:36All right.
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