Creating a splash with Tom Daley

We have arrived up here at the culmination of a crash program in diving that Daley is providing to encourage his Saturday night tv series Splash!, in which celebrities attempt to dive without having setting off as well considerable a bow wave.

In my case, it is much more of a crash-bang-wallop program, soundtracked by the percussive, echoing spank of flesh coming into sharp and inelegant speak to with water. Water which, incidentally, is a whole lot more difficult than it seems to be when addressed from 10 metres.

In contrast to several a tv critic who has verbally strafed it as the lowest hanging of celebrity issues, Daley is very fond of Splash!.

“Yes, the show’s cheesy, but I type of really like the truth it is cheesy like that,” he says. “Young children adore Splash! They come up to me all the time, receiving genuinely enthusiastic by it.”

His function on the present is to coach a motley collection of faded pop stars, actuality tv survivors and publicity-hungry back-bench MPs in the intricacies of the forward tuck, reverse somersault and pike. Then to show before they dive in front of a reside tv audience of 5 million precisely what they need to be performing. The contrast between the flawless strategy of the young man who won a bronze medal at London 2012 and the celebrities’ disastrous attempts of their personal is at the heart of the programme’s conceit.

Although Daley should inwardly despair at the inelegance of his pupils, he is the most patient and encouraging of instructors. “You’ve got great balance in the air,” he says, as I spin like an out-of-management dervish. Or “that was genuinely good” when the stinging sensation across my stomach as I smack into the water suggests that it was, in fact, truly undesirable.

“It actually tends to make me feel about my diving,” he says, of taking the hapless by means of the fundamentals. “I’m standing there viewing somebody on the edge of the board and I’m considering: ‘How on earth do I do a somersault from there? How do I do a handstand and land the correct way up? How does my body know how to do that?’ It makes me feel: ‘What the hell?’ Sometimes it’s hard for me to get my head all around it, so educating folks who’ve never been up there just before puts it into point of view. It is more difficult than it seems.”

He is proper there. An hour on the boards in the Luton pool where the programme is filmed is sufficient to arrest any urge to mock celebrity belly-flops. Even from the three-metre board, the minimal height contestants are expected to address, you commence to have sympathy for the rugby player Martin Offiah, who, in spite of currently being constructed like a brick outhouse, whimpered like a misplaced puppy when obliged to jump off.

Following my dive from three metres, accompanied by a whack so loud it would have alarmed the residents of Dunstable, Daley suggests: “Maybe we ought to just stick to jumping when we get to the increased boards.”

Not that the humiliation was confined to the real diving. Standing semi-naked following to a man dressed in micro-Speedos, whose honed, bronzed physique offers contrast to the flabby instance of pasty middle age alongside, is not fantastic for any man’s self-esteem.

But then Daley has been entering the water at pace for most of his life. Because he was eight he has dived from heights most of us would normally approach aboard an aircraft. He became an Olympic medallist before he had carried out his A-ranges. And with good results has come consideration. This is a youthful man whose growing up has took place in public, from the revelation that he was bullied at school, by means of the reduction of his hugely supportive father, to his recent information that he is now in a gay partnership.

Back at the poolside, our conversation is eavesdropped by numerous representatives, industrial agents and tv folk to make certain that no concerns are asked about how a lot of of his distraught teenage female followers have returned to the manufacturer the souvenir key rings carrying the logo “this belongs to the 1st Mrs Tom Daley”.

Not that the minders want worry. Daley is adept at making sure his personal existence stays just that: personal. Asked if he is now happy, for instance, he keeps things properly neutral in his reply: “I’m genuinely happy with the show and how it is going. And with my coaching.”

But then, he has been employed to a microphone arriving beneath his nose given that he was a tiny, pipe-voiced 12-12 months-previous novice. As his YouTube video making his announcement of his romantic relationship suggests, with its flawless X Factor-style dramatic pause prior to the big reveal, he is aware of exactly how to talk. And he has seamlessly parlayed his sporting prowess into a tv career.

“I’d like to be a Television presenter when I finish diving. I have usually wished to do that, given that I was about ten,” he says. “I really like performing it. I’d like to do something entertaining, Ant and Dec type of type.”

Indeed, there are some who suggested ahead of the London Olympics that he was a little as well keen on appearing on television. He had, his critics insisted, taken his eye off the diving board.

“Everyone’s entitled to their viewpoint, but I wouldn’t miss a training session for anything at all,” he says. “The folks who know my education schedule and know how difficult I operate, know I’m carrying out every thing I can to get a gold medal in Rio 2016. That is my primary concentrate. Diving is my quantity a single priority. Anyway, this display is actually very good for our sport. It will get folks interested. If somebody had told me 10 years in the past that diving was going to have its own prime-time Saturday evening entertainment demonstrate, I’d have mentioned: ‘Yeah proper, whatever.’ ”

Aside from, he adds, provided that his function on Splash! is to do an terrible whole lot of diving, he is not positive how it can be counter-productive to his golden ambition. “The very best thing about this show is that the studio is a pool. There is a gymnasium and a dry-dive region round the back. I can train even though I’m working here.”

Daley looks genuinely enthusiastic about the efforts of the show’s celebrities, is full of appreciation for the bravery of rivals such as MP Penny Mordaunt, who landed horribly on her back in the course of final Saturday’s show, or the comedian Jenny Eclair, who tweeted pictures of her bruised thighs following a education dive which made her appear like the victim of a street accident.

“Check out Austin Healey,” he says of the former England rugby player who is diving on the present this Saturday. “Now, he’s truly received it.”

As opposed to me. When I ultimately surface following jumping off the substantial board, my abdomen having apparently relocated itself to the soles of my feet, I look back up to see Daley leaning above the edge, viewing. “That’s excellent, but you may like to keep your arms by your side up coming time, otherwise it’ll hurt.”

He need to have not have been anxious. There won’t be a following time. As far as visiting Tom Daley’s workplace is concerned, as soon as is enough.

‘Splash!’ is on ITV at six.45pm on Saturday

Creating a splash with Tom Daley