Strictly Tom Skinner's firm failed to pay back £50k Covid loan to taxpayer despite boast

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.

The star is at the centre of new controversy over his company finances after it emerged one business applied for the tax-payer-funded Government loan in 2020. Five years on, there is no record of the firm - the Fluffy Pillow Company - which lists Skinner as the sole director - ever paying the loan back.

This is despite Skinner going on to say how that firm - and a second, Bosh Beds - both profited specifically from the UK pandemic. He even says the latter business was able to “ride a wave on the back of Covid.”

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.

Writing in his autobiography, he says of the pillow firm: “The company grew quickly after I finished The Apprentice and did 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 Bosh Beds, which was formally registered months later in October 2020, was “taking £130,000 pound a week in sales, by 2021, and had 14 staff.

He said “Everyone's got loads of money. We was cleaning up. It was easy. It was so easy I put a (social media) post up, it would take £30 grand worth of orders.” He added: “I was riding a wave on the back of covid….million-pound deals were the norm every couple of months. It was insane.”

Later, in December 2021, Skinner boasted: “Today I’ve turnt (sic) over £1.8 million pound in 1 year with BOSH BEDS!”

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The Government loan scheme was intended to provide relief to small businesses who had been “adversely affected” by Covid. The scheme was self-certified meaning the lender did not verify the applicant's financial information upfront. Instead, the applicant declares it themselves. This approach was intended to speed up the application process and get money out faster during the crisis.

Skinner has previously claimed The Fluffy Pillow Company was hit by theCovid 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?”

During lockdown the business started selling mattresses instead, with Skinner claiming that he could deliver them across the UK as they were deemed “essential.” By the time the Covid loan scheme opened for applications in May 2020, he told how the pivot to selling mattresses instead of pillows was booming.

He said: “Through the whole first lockdown, we worked seven days a week and non-stop, and because there were no cars around, we were getting sort of 20 to 30 deliveries on the day, going all over the country, dropping off mattresses. And it was brilliant. And I thought, ‘wow, we have seriously got a business here. And we started really cracking on and getting in front. We had no competition. We were lucky. And that is when I'm really starting to earn my money.”

The Fluffy Pillow Company’s official Instagram page shows Skinner delivering mattresses, beds and pillows throughout 2020 up until December.

In the end the The Fluffy Pillow Company applied for the maximum loan of £50,000. To do so Skinner had to self-certify his business had previously been turning over £200,000 a year.

The loan rules state the firm should have started paying back in 12 months but there is no record of any payment having been 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 firm with the outstanding debt. Two strike-offs were discontinued, possibly for administrative reasons, and two have been suspended because of an objection. We asked Skinner whether that was due to the outstanding loan but Skinner has declined to comment on the reason.

Skinner has said conflicting things as to when The Fluffy Pillow company stopped trading. Despite its social media showing Skinner and his workers - in The Fluffy Pillow uniforms - delivering goods up until December 2020, in one interview he has said how the business failed when lockdown hit in March 2020.

Asked in a podcast if he had “literally lost your pillow business overnight,” he replied: “Yes….I had been taking a lot of money. I was in a state.” But in another interview he admits: “I kept all the guys on and kept trying to keep everything going.”

A spokesperson for Skinner hasn’t answered questions as to when the firm stopped trading nor is it clear why Skinner repeatedly refers to Fluffy Pillows having employees while the company's micro-accounts state the company had an average of one employee. Curiously, in Skinner’s 2023 autobiography he suggested he hadn’t taken out any form of loan.

He wrote: “Some people enjoyed sitting at home getting their furlough money but that wasn’t for me. I could have taken a business loan and stayed at home baking and doing Joe Wicks workouts, and there was nothing wrong with that. But Covid was another blind-pour moment in my life. After lockdown the business continued to do well. I took on staff, opened retail units and grew.” Skinner later quit as a director of Bosh Beds in November 2022.

Around 114,000 companies have gone into liquidation with Covid loans, according to Government figures. Last week the Government announced a voluntary repayment window, described as a “Covid repayment amnesty” that runs until December 2025. It gives directors the opportunity to repay funds from Covid support schemes, including the bounce back loans, without immediate questions