Can You Spare A Multi-Millionaire A Pound Please

If a tramp asked you if you could spare him a cigarette and after you kindly gave him one he took £200 out of his pocket and gave it to you what would you think? Or if you saw a homeless man sat in a shop doorway and you gave him a bit of loose change and he got up and gave you a handful of £20 notes how would you react? And imagine just how elated you'd feel if you were up to your eye balls in debt and were about to be evicted from your home and a Good Samaritan came along and cleared your rent arrears for you and paid off all your debts and then paid for you and your two kids to go to Disney World in Florida. Well those scenarios - and dozens more like them - have actually happened. And the ‘tramp’ and the 'homeless man' and the Good Samaritan are one and the same person.

Whilst driving his car one day, Adam Gleeson pulled onto a pay and display car park and as he walked towards the machine to get a ticket he noticed a man sat in a Bentley Continental, a car that was worth around £150,000, parked in the bay next to the machine. And as Adam was getting his ticket the man got out of the Bentley and asked him could he spare him a £1 so he too could get a ticket. Adam started laughing and jokingly said to the man, “Are you taking the mickey?! You’re driving a car like that and you’re asking me for a pound!”

The man explained that he’d left his house without his wallet and didn’t have any change for a ticket and so Adam thought well it’s something we’ve all done, left the house without any money, and he gave the man a pound coin so he could get a car parking ticket. And the man thanked him. Put his hand in his pocket. Took two £50 notes out. Gave them to Adam - along with his £1 coin back - and got in his Bentley and drove off!

It transpired that Adam had just past one of Tom’s - the driver of the Bentley - kindness tests that he sometimes does where he rewards people for showing kindness towards others. It also transpired that Tom was a multi-millionaire worth in excess of £100 million and who one day realised that he’d never get around to spending all the money he’s got, so he started giving it away - to complete strangers in bizarre and unusual ways, leaving them totally bewildered into the bargain.

From sending hundreds of pounds inside Christmas cards to people he’s never met, to hiding wads of cash inside newspapers on the London Underground for people to find and leaving it hanging out of cash dispensers for people to take, to clearing a single mum’s debts and paying for her and her two young daughters to go on a dream holiday to Disney World in Florida which totalled over £10,000, to taking another family he'd never met before out on his yacht for the day in Majorca and then paying for their holiday too, which amounted to over £5,000. He's also put a homeless man up in a hotel in Brighton for a week and thrown $100 dollar bills (the equivalent of a week’s wage) out of his hotel window in Thailand to local Thai people on the street below!

Tom also tells of why he once gave a woman in Tesco's a £100 because she sneezed, carried a nurse's shopping to her car for her and then gave her £250, bought an elderly couple an expensive plasma television in Curry's, how he goes into shops and hides money inside clothes and books for people to find when they buy them and take them home, why he paid for fifty people’s MOT's at a garage, and how he asked a road sweeper if he believed in the saying 'where there's muck there's money' and then watched as he dived into his own litter bin after he told him he'd just thrown a thousand pounds in it!

Bizarre? Slightly Odd? Maybe. Does Tom's generosity brighten up people's day and put a smile on their faces? Definitely. And to Tom that's all that matters. And it's one of the most remarkable stories you'll ever read.

Tom’s book is now being made into a film.

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