SPORTING legend Daley Thompson is being lined up to enter the Celebrity Big Brother house.
The double Olympic gold winner, who is in advanced talks with producers, is considered by some to be the greatest all-round athlete Britain has ever produced.
Daley, 66, will have plenty of tales to share about his long and colourful career when he goes into CBB, which starts next month on ITV1.
But producers will also be hoping that he will stir things up when he’s sharing the house with a string of Gen Z and Millennial stars.
A TV insider said: “Daley is notoriously unwoke and likes to be provocative, so it will be interesting to see how he is received by some of the younger housemates.
“As someone who was at the height of his fame in the Eighties, many of them will barely know who he is – but for a generation of older viewers he’ll be seen as a great signing.”
He’s previously created controversy in the Eighties after suggesting fellow athlete Carl Lewis was gay, and in 2012 he made a gag about a mis-spelt tattoo suggesting the person who’d done it “must have been Irish”.
Daley has spent many years out of the limelight but re-emerged with his autobiography, Daley: Olympic Superstar, and a BBC documentary of the same name, which were both released last year.
They chronicled his incredible career, most notably in decathlons which saw him win two golds in the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
The father of five, who was born in London, also won a further haul of six golds in the Commonwealth games as well as the World and European championships.
Turbulent love life
The two-time decathlon gold medallist grew up using food and clothes banks on a council estate in London’s Notting Hill.
He was given his first pair of SL72 Adidas trainers in 1975, five years before his first Olympic win.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”How Daley Thompson overcame poverty, scandal and brutal murder of his dad at 11 to become Olympic legend – and the VERY saucy comment he made to senior royal” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6358154650112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]He was notorious for his womanising at the height of his sporting fame and once joked that “any woman only has to sit on a bed I’ve slept in to get pregnant”.
He counts Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies among his exes, after they dated in the late Seventies, but says he doesn’t see her as the “one that got away”.
He married childhood sweetheart Patricia Quinlan, in 1987, and had three children – Rachel, 35, Austin, 33 and Elliot, 30.
The couple split in the late 1990s and he later moved in with Lisa Clayton, with whom he shares sons Alex, 22, and Aaron, 17, but their on-off relationship ended in 2016.
Recently, the Olympic legend has found love again.
He says: “My boys set me up – I think so they don’t have to look after me!
“She’s a professional carer for a living and she’s looking after me. So I’ve chosen somebody well – just in case I become old and infirm!
“I don’t intend to marry again. I don’t see the point.”
Dad’s brutal murder
His Scottish mum Lydia held down three jobs including milkwoman. His British Nigerian dad, Frank, ran a minicab firm and also did a stretch in prison.
Aged seven, he was packed off to Sussex boarding school – which he has described as “a place for troubled children.”
Four years later he was summoned to the headmaster’s office and told his father had been brutally murdered on the streets of Streatham, South West London by a jealous husband.
He says: “My mum told me that he and another man were out with two ladies and one of the ladies’ husbands turned up and shot him.
“While he was my father he wasn’t really my dad. He didn’t act how I’d consider a dad to, so it didn’t have the effect on me that it would have had he been a good father.
“All the experiences you have obviously make you the person you are.”
CBB returns
Other names said to be joining Celebrity Big Brother include Coronation Street actor Jack P Shepherd and Love Island star Chris Hughes.
The upcoming series will be the second since being rebooted on ITV.
