Carol Vorderman: Captain Sir Tom Moore ‘deserves stone in Westminster Abbey’

The presenter, 60, who previously honoured Sir Tom at the Pride of Britain awards, said the nation had “fallen in love” with the late Army veteran.

People are mourning his loss, but also celebrating him at the same time, she said.

Vorderman told Good Morning Britain: “I think he deserves a stone in Westminster Abbey because I think he embodies this whole terrible pandemic which we are all living through.

“So many have lost their grandmas and their granddads, their fathers and their mothers, their sisters, their brothers, and I think he embodies that and we loved him.

“I think we have genuinely fallen in love with Captain Tom.”

She said that to children, who sent many of the thousands of birthday cards celebrating Sir Tom’s 100th birthday, he was “like a superhero.”

“They will desperately miss him… There’s something about that optimism that Captain Sir Tom embodied,” Vorderman said.

Dame Vera Lynn’s daughter said Sir Tom, who raised more than £32 million for the NHS during the first lockdown and died aged 100 after testing positive for Covid-19, will be remembered as somebody who “stepped up to the mark”.

Virginia Lewis-Jones told the ITV show: “He was such a wonderful person. There’s something about that age group, they seem to go on forever because they’re so stalwart, and I think it’s what they went through.

“Tom lived for the country and worked for the country now as he did all those years ago.”

Ms Lewis-Jones said her late mother wrote to Sir Tom because she thought he was “fabulous”.

She added: “He did now what he did then – fought for what he thought was right.”

DIY SOS host Nick Knowles, who helped get a fence built for Sir Tom to help him retain some privacy amid the glare of the world’s media, said: “He was like a father or grandfather.

“Everyone was very frightened about the epidemic, and … it seemed that nobody could see a clear way.”

But, he said, “that voice of greater authority, because of his service and the fact he was 100 years old, saying, ‘It will be okay’, he became everyone’s grandfather, everyone’s father, everyone’s voice of authority and positivity, when we desperately needed it in this country”.

And he added: “He had a really naughty sense of humour as well. He laughed a lot.

“He was very funny and quite naughty, He was a proper human being, a rounded human being that just knew what duty and honour and things like that meant.”