Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnan Garimuthy and this is the

podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and

the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week is the Olympic gold medallist

campaigner, activist, television presenter, very famous nitter, Tom Daly.

And if I was born in a country where homosexuality was illegal, what would my existence be?

Would I exist? Would I still be alive? Would I have been killed by vigilante groups?

There are so many things that could have been if I was born in a different place.

Hi Tom, welcome to the podcast. We've got you on this week because you've made a documentary

which combines all of those things except knitting. And it was a remarkable piece of work

investigating LGBTQ plus rights, particularly in sport, and followed your campaign for

the Commonwealth Games. So tell me, I mean, how did it come about? Why did you want to do it?

So I actually started around this time last year right after the Olympics and kind of feeling

a little bit, you know, feeling extremely privileged to be in position that I'm in, living

in the UK, married with the kids and feeling very lucky with where my life is. And then

sporting events being announced and being looking like people looking forward to going to places

where the LGBT laws are very extreme. For example, the World Cup and Qatar, the Formula One going

to the Middle East as well. Lots of places where queer people are persecuted in quite extreme

ways and in some cases, the death penalty. So for me, it was about figuring out how as a sporting

federation what they can do to better protect queer people and to support them. And also not

just that, but trying to figure out what demands and what things could be put forward to them in

order to be able to make those changes. And I went in with the whole thought of that no country

with an anti-LGBT stand should be able to have the privilege of hosting such a prestigious sporting

...