Would Captain Tom want his own statue?

Captain Sir Tom Moore was a lovely man and an inspiration to centenarians everywhere. Actually, forget centenarians; if the rest of us could be so chipper and nicely turned out at half his age, we’d be doing well. I was oddly moved to hear of his death, though not, I fear, to the point of turning out at my window to applaud. But then I gave the communal pot banging a miss for the NHS during lockdown too, so that’s nothing new.

I’m not convinced Boris Johnson is right, though, when he says Captain Tom deserves a statue. After all, he was a modest man, Sir Tom; I’m not sure he wouldn’t be embarrassed himself by the idea.

In fact, we’re rather too keen on erecting statues as a means of registering approval of figures in the public eye, most of them pretty hideous – did you see the awful one of Margaret Thatcher for her home town of Grantham which managed even to get her hair wrong? Though I suppose, putting them up is less damaging than pulling down the ones we disapprove of.