Profile Tom Sparke
Alias Captain Fishbeard Anyone reading this who has children at the Primary School will probably know immediately who Captain Fishbeard is! Others may know him as Tom Sparke, respectable Investment Manager for GDIM in Cambridge. Either way, he is quite a character. I was alerted to the presence of Captain Fishbeard in our village by a small article in the Royston Crow. This outlined how the cartoon character was using the internet to amuse children cooped up at home during the Corona Virus Lockdown. Intrigued, I asked my friend Jacey who has young children if she had heard of him. Not only heard of him, but he is a near neighbour she replied. Bingo. So duly appraised of his details I made contact and arranged to do a telephone profile for this extraordinary edition of the magazine. I have done dozens of these profiles over the years, but none so difficult as one where you could not meet and study your subject! Anyway, here goes. Tom was born in 1981 in Cambridge, a young brother for his sister Sammi, who is now a photographer. He spent his early years in St. Neots with his businessman father and probation officer mother. Studying Psychology in Bradford he met his wife Lucy and they got married in 2010; by this time they were living in Haslingfield, then in 2014 they moved into Melbourn. They have two daughters aged 7 and 5 – Alana, who had the distinction of being amongst the first babies to be born in the new Rosie suite, and Etta. They both attend Melbourn Primary School and are keen
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members of the Brownies and Rainbows. Both girls have very fertile imaginations and frequently give him advice on his storylines. So yes, Captain Fishbeard. I was surprised when I went on to Youtube to see that Tom does, in fact, have a beard himself so perhaps the character is autobiographical? From early childhood Tom was always drawing, never happier than when he had pencil and paper in his hands. Growing up he dabbled in watercolours and oils but always returned to a simple pencil or pen and paper. He has published numerous books including Captain Fishbeard volumes 1 and 2 and Brollo (predictably about an umbrella) beautifully illustrated in full colour and available online. When the schools closed before Easter he realised that there was an urgent need to keep young minds focused and he has been turning out Youtube drawing tutorials for young children at a ferocious rate. Having spent many hours drawing with his own children and encouraging them to pick up a pencil and draw, he wanted to reach out to other children stranded at home without access to their friends. He releases a new video every Tuesday and Friday and they must be a Godsend to young mothers coping with cooped up children. We all know how much young children enjoy drawing; give a child crayons and paper (don’t let them get near a wall!) and off they go. Thousands of grandmothers like me have tea towels printed with little William’s rendition of himself or Mummy and Daddy and we proudly look at the stick arms and legs and hedgehog hair. Christmas cards also frequently feature children’s drawings so why is it that so many of us lose the urge to express ourselves on paper as we grow older? Do we become overcritical about our skill? Certainly Alana and Etta will never stop drawing. They have both inherited their father’s fascination with pen and paper and their fertile imaginations
