Celebrity Big Brother: Why Daley Thompson is my pick to win the new series

It was a holiday to remember. Four days in Turkey for the opening of a luxury hotel - the Anda Barut, most recently seen as the prize destination in The Masked Singer’s viewer competition - would have been good enough, but taking centre stage was the chance to train with Olympians.

As a keen - if declining runner - being in the same postcode as Daley Thompson, Denise Lewis, Jamie Baulch and Colin Jackson would have been exciting enough, but the fact that they would actually put us through our paces was... exhilarating. So it came about that after a group run with Paula Radcliffe (YES I KNOW!), those of us who wanted more exercise in the morning cool turned up to a circuits session with the above-mentioned quartet.

Firstly, some context. I’m not old enough to remember a lot of Daley’s decathlon career but when I was little he was in his prime. I can just about remember the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984 though it’s fuzzy, but for anyone even half-interested in track and field he was a superstar, breaking the world record four times and remaining unbeaten for almost a decade.

His was the first autograph I ever had - I didn’t meet him but my grandma bagged a signed picture, I think when he turned up to Stretford Library in Manchester, where she worked. It was in a plastic covering and it became a treasured possession.

And in the days when Lucozade came in a clear glass bottle with orange wrapping and was given to you when you were ill - yes, that was the 1980s, kids - his TV advert was one of the first signs that the “glucose” drink was going to become a “sports” drink. It’s an overused word and in general I dislike it, but with his big tache, bigger personality and huge achievements, Daley Thompson was iconic. He really was.

Anyway, back to more recent times, back to being beasted in Turkey. The group of us, probably about 25-strong, were in a circle having orders barked at us by the Olympians. Jump, run, bend, etc - exactly the kind of workout that you know will do great things for you, but you always hate doing. I’m phenomenally inflexible - for me the challenge is more to touch my knees than my toes and so stretching exercises are, to say the least, difficult.

Daley, who as the Bad Cop of the instructors - and didn’t he just love that! - relished dishing out the tasks. And he wasn’t there to sugar the pill - when he saw my hopeless effort, he hooted with the derision “look at this old guy!”. I was too out of breath to point out “Mate, you’ve got at least 20 years on me” but to be honest that wasn’t the point - he may be in his mid-60s but he’s as lithe and strong-looking as anyone . Certainly more than I am.

But - and this is the key to it all - he was just telling it like it is. And it wasn’t nasty, vindictive or looking for laughs - he also had a crack at some of the others in a bid to spur them on. Afterwards, as we trudged towards a tent to get a banana and a healthy smoothie, he came over for a quiet “well done son, good effort” word - a born coach for whom you would work yourself to the bone.

Daley has been described more than once as “notoriously unwoke” and while I don’t know either which way, I can believe it. He is his age, I’m sure he’s a product of his age and Wikipedia tells me he was born in Notting Hill, which 66 years ago was very much not the hangout of film stars and the liberal elite. But from my experience over a few days, while he’s unvarnished and cares not two hoots what people might think about him, he’ll look after people and look out for people. I wish him all the luck.