Daley did not perform any miracles in Beijing but he did not need to, Britain was already hooked.
He did, however, produce the greatest ever performance by a British diver a year later in Rome, when he won a world title. When his winner’s media conference was interrupted by Robert wanting to hug his son, well, his place in my mother’s heart, for starters, was guaranteed forever.
Robert, at this stage, had been in remission for nearly three years after having 80% of a brain tumour removed. A year later, a second tumour appeared, and a year after that, he died.
This all happened to Tom in the full gaze of the British public.
But then Daley was used to making headlines for matters beyond the pool. In 2009, he was offered a place by the exclusive Plymouth College, external when it became known that he was being bullied at his state school.
If you thought that might encourage him to keep a low profile for a while, we were then reading about his GCSE photography project that involved him persuading supermodel Kate Moss to pose for a picture. His is a life that has always been about the lens.
Throughout all this, however, Daley continued to post results that suggested he might just pull off the Hollywood ending and win an Olympic gold in London. But, in true soap-opera fashion, this path was never smooth.
First, he was told to lose weight by the British diving team’s Russian performance director, Alexei Evangulov. How could Tom, a nation’s sweetheart, be too fat?
