Tom Moore, a 99-year-old veteran, wanted to raise £1000 for the NHS to thank them for the treatment that he had received for his broken hip bone and skin cancer. To do this he vowed to walk a hundred times up and down his garden before his hundredth birthday and asked people to sponsor him.
He was happy because his daughter’s company wrote a very short article about what her father was doing. Local newspapers started to write about it. Eventually it reached BBC Breakfast and he soon had raised 1 million pounds. Lots of people started gathering around his house to watch him do his laps.
He finished his challenge live on BBC the 16th of April. By the 20th of April he had raised over 20 million pounds. Nick Knowles made a fence around his garden to keep it safe from the spectators. Tom received so many cards that he used a local school hall to keep them all in. He received at least 160,000 cards. Boris Johnson wished him a happy birthday and the Queen sent him a birthday telegram.
