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You have to feel for Hannah Ingram-Moore. One or two teensy little mistakes, like using the charity set up in your dad’s name – of which you were chief executive on £85,000 a year – to build a now-demolished spa complex at home, or not giving a portion of your £1.5m book deal to charity as promised, and you find yourself on the sharp end of a hate campaign. So unfair.
Thankfully, the daughter of Covid hero Captain Sir Tom Moore, who raised £39m for NHS charities by walking 100 laps of his garden in April 2020, still has love and kindness in her heart despite all this. So much so, in fact, that she’s generously sharing it with the rest of us.
For instance: “It’s easy to waste energy worrying about things you can’t control. But here’s the truth – your power lies in how you steady yourself.” Or how about: “When life feels uncertain, which it so often does, let’s lead with kindness. It’s the one thing we never run out of.” And the sort of advice that’s so hard to come by online: “Trust your instinct, you know more than you think.”
Yes, in a parable for our times, Ingram-Moore has reinvented herself as a TikTok resilience coach. The 54-year-old is doling out daily mantras that she calls “Moore moments” – which is her name and definitely not another example of using her dad for potential commercial gain. There’s a podcast, too, in which she interviews people about “reinvention, resilience, grief, leadership, legacy, pressure and hope” with “more than a touch of British warmth” – on perfect display when she oh-so warmly asks one woman “tell us about the horror of the time when your mum was shot during a robbery”.
Anyway, the TikTok “moments” are delivered in bite-size selfie-style videos, in which Ingram-Moore clearly hasn’t spent time worrying about trying to control the background noise, or thinking about using her power to steady the camerawork. In one, she’s apparently been struck by a flash of inspiration while going up an escalator and had to deliver her wisdom there and then to her audience of 10.7k, who are definitely not hate-following.
As apparent “grifter to guru” narratives go, it’s not so far from the sort of spiritual influencers who use the internet to preach joy and self-reflection, while simultaneously building a personal brand. And if you’re thinking, “hang on, I thought Captain Sir Tom’s daughter had been cancelled”, then you’re woefully behind on cancellation culture which, as things stand, seems to mean a few months of criticism before you can forge a new career on the back of all that notoriety and try to connect authentically to the same general public you previously let down.
Or, as Ingram-Moore says: “No one is you and that is your power. You are still writing your story so don’t stop now.”
Unfortunately for her, the Charity Commission has finished writing its damning report into Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin. It published the results of its investigation in November last year and found the family had personally benefited from the Captain Tom Foundation, with “serious and repeated” instances of misconduct and mismanagement, as well as “misleading” the public. Ingram-Moore called it “selective storytelling” and said the commission had a “predetermined agenda”.
“The last few years have tested me. The criticism, the judgment, the noise, but here is what I have learned,” she said in one recent TikTok. “Self-doubt gets louder when you’re under pressure. Confidence – that comes from keeping going quietly, consistently, even when people doubt you.”
To be fair, she knows of what she speaks. As Ingram-Moore says on her website, advertising her skills as a resilience leader, philanthropist and public speaker (fees on request), she’s “lived it” and can help others with how to “rebuild trust, control your narrative and emerge stronger” after reputational damage.
Certainly, she might prefer that to some of the comments left below the line on her self-help videos. “Can you give me advice on how to financially benefit from a charity I’ve set up in honour of a family member please?” says one. “Can you recommend someone who can build an extension?” asks another.
“You are ridiculous and ignorant,” is her standard reply. “FACT CHECK: £38.9m went entirely to NHS charities.” As Ingram-Moore puts it: “You don’t have to prove them wrong, you just have to believe in yourself and trust your truth.” Now that’s resilience in action.
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Claire Cohen is a journalist and the author of BFF? The Truth About Female Friendship
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