Thomas Skinner, a contestant in the Strictly Come Dancing, boasted about raising millions of pounds for the pandemic but hasn’t returned a £50, 000 Covid loan he borrowed from the government.
One of Strictly contestant Thomas Skinner’s firms has not paid back a £50,000 Covid bounce back loan – despite the star boasting about turning over “millions” during the pandemic.
After one business applied for a tax-payer-funded government loan in 2020, the star is the subject of fresh controversy over his company’s finances. Five years later, there is no evidence that Skinner, the Fluffy Pillow Company, has ever paid back the loan.
Despite Skinner stating that Bosh Beds and another company had both made a profit in particular from the UK pandemic, Skinner goes on to explain. He even claims that Covid could “ride a wave on its back” thanks to the latter business.
The revelations are another blow to the credibility of the BBC show, which is already reeling after a torrid few years. And they will leave Strictly bosses under further pressure to explain the rationale behind signing Skinner who last week admitted cheating on his wife.
He describes the pillow company in his autobiography as “growing quickly after I finished The Apprentice and doing very well thanks to massive demand during the pandemic when everyone had money to spare and plenty of time to spend in bed.” He claimed that Bosh Beds, which had 14 employees and was officially registered months later in October 2020, was “taking £130, 000 pound a week in sales by 2021.”
Everyone has a lot of money, he said. We were doing some cleaning. It was simple. I put up a (social media) post because it was so simple; orders would have to be made for £30 million. I was riding a wave on the back of a covid, he continued. Every few months, multi-million dollar deals were common. It was insane.
Later, in December of that year, Skinner gushed, “Today I’ve turned over £1.8 million pound with BOSH BEDS! “
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Small businesses that had been “disaffected” by Covid were benefited by the government loan program. The applicant’s financial information was self-certified, which meant the lender didn’t have to wait for the lender to verify it. Instead, the applicant makes their own declarations. In order to speed up the application process and expedite the release of funds during the crisis, this strategy was employed.
Skinner has previously claimed The Fluffy Pillow Company was hit by the Covid lockdown in March 2020 after sales had initially soared after his stint on the Apprentice in 2019. He said: “I’d just moved to this lovely house. I’d bought a big car.. I had to find £1000 a month to pay for that on finance. And because it was going so well, and all sudden it stopped dead, I thought. And I’ve got a baby on the way I thought, what am I gonna do?”
Instead of selling mattresses during the lockdown, Skinner claimed he could deliver them across the UK because they were deemed “essential.” He claimed that the switch to selling mattresses instead of pillows was booming when the Covid loan scheme began accepting applications in May 2020.
He continued, “We worked seven days a week and non-stop throughout the entire first lockdown, and we received about 20 to 30 deliveries on the day, traveling all over the country, and dropping off mattresses,” It turned out fantastic. And I thought, “Wow, we have a serious business here.” And we began to really advance and win. There was no competition. We had a good fortune. And that’s when I really start making money.
The Fluffy Pillow Company’s official Instagram page shows Skinner delivering mattresses, beds and pillows throughout 2020 up until December.
The Fluffy Pillow Company ultimately requested a maximum loan of £50,000. Skinner had to self-certify that his company had previously generated over £200,000 annually in order to do this.
According to the loan regulations, the business should have begun making payments in 12 months, but there is no evidence of any payments ever being made. The £50, 000 is listed as being owed in accounts from both 2021 and 2022.
Companies House has issued four notices to liquidate the business with the outstanding debt. Two strike-offs have been suspended due to an objection, and two have been discontinued, possibly for administrative reasons. We inquired about whether the outstanding loan was to blame, but Skinner has declined to comment on the matter.
The Fluffy Pillow company stopped trading, according to Skinner, who has contradicted his claims. In one interview, Skinner claimed how the business failed when the lockdown hit in March 2020 despite social media showing him and his employees, wearing The Fluffy Pillow uniforms, delivering goods up until December 2020.
He responded to a question in a podcast about how he “literally lost your pillow business overnight.” Yes. I had spent a lot of money. I was at a state. However, he acknowledges this in another interview: “I kept trying to keep everything going. I kept all the guys on.”
When the company’s micro-accounts claim the company had an average of one employee, Skinner’s spokesperson hasn’t responded to questions about when the company stopped trading. Strangely, he suggested in Skinner’s 2023 autobiography that he hadn’t taken out any kind of loan.
He continued, “Some people liked getting their furlough money at home, but that wasn’t for me.” There was no wrong with me if I had taken out a business loan and continued to bake at home while Joe Wicks exercised. Covid was yet another life experience that left me speechless. The company continued to prosper even after lockdown. I hired new employees, opened new stores, and expanded. Skinner resigned from Bosh Beds in November 2022.
Source: Mirror
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