Captain Tom’s 100th Birthday: A Quintessentially British Occasion?

Last Updated on April 30, 2020 by Karl Thompson

Today is Captain Tom’s 100th Birthday, an event broadcast live to the nation by BBC Breakfast between 8.00 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.

Captain Tom really is the perfect media hero for our times, and the construction of ‘our national hero’ was levelled up this morning as it turns out Captain Tom seems to be a huge fan of many of the symbols which signify classic conservative ideas about ‘Britishness’.

Honestly, it was all there, crammed into a 30 minute slot on BBC breakfast this morning….

The Armed Forces and the Fly By…

We know him as Captain Tom, but he’s now been given the honorary title of ‘Colonel’, so take your pick (he doesn’t mind). He got a special fly by this morning, and really seemed to love it!

You can check out the fly-by and most of the rest of the BBC ”Tom show’ below…

The historical Link to World War II

There aren’t many WWII veterans alive, but Captain Tom is one of them, and WWII – that’s deep in the conservative idea of the nation!

I guess this link is even more popular because of the fake similarities with ‘fighting’ Coronavirus.

His love of the Royal Family

Captain Tom thanked the Royal Family (who he thinks are wonderful) for their letters of support.

This ‘deferral to authority’ goes along with being in the armed forces I guess. Very much part of Conservative Britishness.

The countryside village in which he lives

Ironically the only thing not British about the village is the name – Marston Moretaine, maybe that’s the result of a French twinning project?

But everything else about it seems quintissentially British – it’s bang in the middle of Oxford and Cambridge, so proper ‘home counties’, lovely fields and a church.

It’s basically a cross between ‘Midsommer Murders’ but without the murders, the Vicar of Dibley and Last of the Summer Wine, with the poor people hidden from site.

His Love of Cricket

Tom is a lifelong cricket fan, and he was today presented with an honorary membership of the England Cricket Club, and gifted a hat by Michael Vaughn, once captain of England.

Is there a sport that says ‘conservative England’ more than cricket?

You’ll Never Walk Alone

A number one in 1963, and Liverpool Football Club’s Anthem – you don’t get much more British than early 1960s pop music and one of our longstanding Premier League clubs!

The Grandchildren

Honestly, they seem to come across as perfect. His grandson’s got that ‘healthy rugby build’ about him, and his granddaughter just seems so perfectly sweet. Framed with Captain Tom’s daughter (presumably their mother) you get the impression of the perfect British nuclear family, albeit stretch out by one generation.

And let’s not forget the NHS

It was Captain Tom’s efforts to raise money for NHS that propelled him to media stardom, and the NHS is part of our ‘national identity’ too, especially recently!

What are we celebrating exactly?

This morning was a ‘pause for celebration’, and fair enough in some respects, but what are we celebrating?

I personally think I witnessed something extremely hyperreal on BBC Breakfast today. The media seems to have used Captain Tom’s 100th birthday as a chance to reinforce conservative ideals about Britishness, ideals that don’t really exist outside of the upper middle class echelons of society.

Maybe this is because Captain Tom (he went to a grammar school in the 1920s!) and media professionals are both of the upper middle class, that this kind of celebration of traditional British identity comes so naturally to them.

I also thought Captain Tom’s efforts were about raising money for the NHS and helping to tackle Coronavirus, but this seems to have just got lost somewhere along the way?

And let’s not forget that 1/7 NHS workers aren’t even British, but they’re risking their lives for us.

2 thoughts on “Captain Tom’s 100th Birthday: A Quintessentially British Occasion?”

  1. Hi thanks very much. Everything I write stays on this blog, so I guess it’s just a matter of bookmarking them!

  2. Really exercising the ‘sociological imagination’. An excellent piece for Yr 11’s coming into Yr 12 Sociology next September. Thank you! Is there somewhere that all your articles can be found for future use?

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