Move over, Mary Berry, and your Great British Baking TV Show. Instead of eating our way through the winter months, we are going to knit.  Yes, you heard that right, it’s time for a new hobby with a new face.  In fact we must confess it’s the latter as the (‘not too unattractive’) face belongs to Tom Daley the British Olympic Diving  Champion.  He is married to American film screenwriter, director, and producer Dustin Lance Black and the couple have two sons born by surrogacy 

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Daley discovered knitting and crocheting, and during the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics television coverage of diving events, Daley was frequently shown knitting in the stands while he watched other athletes compete. He maintains a separate Instagram account dedicated to his knitting and crochet projects, and he gained the confidence to share his work In November 2024, an exhibition of his knitting work in Japan was announced, which would be part of his campaign for the rights of LGBTQ+ people.

Daley fresh from being one of the contestants on the reality TV show Celebrity Traitors is joined by 10 of “the nation’s finest” amateur wool enthusiasts “to battle it out, stitch by stitch, for the chance to win the  eight-part series Game of Wool: Britain’s Best Knitter.  You have 12 hours to give us a really cohesive design concept,” warns judge and veteran designer Di Gilpin and co-judge Sheila Greenwell. The knitters are an assorted collective and the  casting people have naturally included one eccentric. : Holger wears a bow tie and has brought a knitted emotional support chicken with him.  However it is the very charismatic Daley who is both the style and the humor in the show as he literally prances around in some of his own outrageous designs, which he carries off with aplomb.  And his performance in the first episode collected rave reviews, like that of The Guardian which wrote. “Tom Daley is a twinkling, passionate joy of a presenter. The ex-diver is so fantastic that this needle-based Bake Off wannabe is 80% better every time he’s on screen. He absolutely makes this show.“