WEEKLY DISPATCH: How one small act of kindness led to a £4m bar bill
Sleeping in his car with nothing but cancer, this is the story of Chris Illman (Grantee #0208) and the extraordinary thing he did about it.
Greetings everyone. The biggest and bestest perk of stewarding this social experiment is meeting and getting to know all the different people behind the ideas that get submitted to us. In a culture that prides itself on individualism, they stand out like a sore but sexy thumb, out there living their lives as much in consideration of others as they are for themselves. This Weekly Dispatch is about one of them. His name is Chris and what he’s achieved blows my mind. If it blows yours too, then I’d love to hear how and why in the comments down👇. Lots of love, Tom.
When Chris’s idea was submitted to us back in September this year, I put forward to the team two very good reasons for us to fund something else instead.
These were:
He wants to use a $500 grant to buy just 40 burgers. 40 burgers? Ok, he’s gifting them to the homeless community, but 40 burgers doesn’t feel like much bang for buck. And he’s buying them from a pub? That’s why he can only afford 40! Why doesn’t he buy the ingredients and cook them himself? He could feed way more that way.
He’s a Portsmouth fan.
As a Southampton fan (Portsmouth’s footballing arch rivals), that second point would be insurmountable were it not for my team’s total dominance in recent years. We rationalised that to fund a Portsmouth fan would in itself be an act of generosity, given the pain they experience week in week out, watching their team play. Love your enemies, n’all that.
Then we turned our attention to the first point and with a bit of digging this too was easy to resolve. Chris’s 40 burgers, he explained, could go on to catalyse loads more being bought through something he described as ‘The Weatherspoon’s Game’.
Interesting, we thought, but what the hell is ‘The Weatherspoon’s Game’?
We googled and here it is, broken down…
What is ‘Weatherspoons’?
For anyone who lives outside the UK or hasn’t visited and necked a pint before an early morning flight, Weatherspoons is a chain of 803 pubs famed for early opening hours and affordable prices.
It’s got it’s own underground fandom, to say the least. Thousands document and map their funky carpets. Hundreds of thousands count and compare chips they’re served there. Why? I don’t know. They’re pubs that hold a special place in the hearts of UK culture. It’s a sort of truthful-yet-tongue-in-cheek adoration that sits adjacent to what we love to do more than anything else - drink.
What’s ‘The Game’?
The game is housed in a facebook group of 821,000 people who buy food and drinks for strangers via the Weatherspoons app as a no strings attached act of kindness. It’s really that simple. People post a selfie on the group along with their table number, and those in the group open up the app and send them something from the menu. It’s a curious sort of kindness you wouldn’t believe happens were it not for the crazy success of it - an estimated £4,000,000 has been spent playing ‘the game’ since it began.
It’s at this part of the story that we welcome back Chris. Hi, Chris. Because it’s Chris - our very own Grantee #0208 - who created this whole big and beautiful thing.
The Story Behind the Game
If the game’s fame is evidence of how kindness spreads, it’s backstory is proof that it can originate from anywhere - including the deepest, darkest depths of human experience.
In 2017 Chris was diagnosed with cancer. It wasn’t his first experience with the illness. A few years before, his 3 year old son was given the same devastating news. It was, however, his first time tackling such a thing without so much as a roof over his head.
Sleeping in his car and driving it to chemotherapy appointments, a friend reached out and dragged him off to the pub - a Weatherspoons, of course, where they posted on Facebook to share that they were there. Someone then commented asking for their table number and soon enough these pint sized gifts started being placed beside them by the bar staff. Touched by this, Chris set up the Facebook group, created some rules and started to encourage others to do the same.
The rest is history.
Although no history is a straight line.
As he continued his battle against cancer he was eventually allocated council housing and benefits - although 70% of the money that came in would go straight back out, as he spent it on food and drinks for first 100 game playing members of his Facebook Group. Wanting others to experience what he did, he was giving all he could to make it happen. “Ninja spending”, he calls it.
Over time some press picked up on the group and membership grew to a critical mass that meant Chris’s ‘ninja spending’ was no longer a necessity (although as a member myself, I’ve noticed that he’s still doing… the little rascal).
With the group growing, so was the need to moderate it. Over the years, Chris has built a 20 strong community of volunteers that work together to navigate the nuances of issues around responsible drinking and age gating. As moderators they have become amazing at what they do and, as Chris explains with as much pride as for any other part of the project, amazing friends too.
They also host a version of the game every month to fund food and drink for the homeless in cities throughout the country. It was September’s event that saw Chris’s initial 40 burgers (paid for with a Drop Dead Generous grant), spark another 100 burgers (the kitchen’s limit) and 1,000 snacks - about £4,000 that takes the group’s total amount raised for this community to over £70,000. Mind blown?
Every cloud
If every cloud has a silver lining, then how has Chris’s wound up raining diamonds? To go from cancer to cancer free. From homeless to housed. To create something in the midst of hell that led to wedding bells (yep, people in the group have met there and got married), via hundreds of thousands of acts of kindness feels to me like it has to be….a miracle.
But it could just be one man being brilliantly human, with the internet at his fingertips, choosing to pay forward kindness when he appreciated it most. Not bad for a Portsmouth fan.