If Tom Daley has a sudden and excessive growth spurt that leaves him unable to execute dives properly, he need not worry — he has done enough to secure the job he craves as a television presenter. He is, at 14, a national treasure. As he entered a restaurant with his friends last week applause broke out among diners as he walked to his table. “My friends just looked at me and thought it was weird,” he said. “I feel respected, though. It’s good to know people watched me dive. You hope people enjoy watching it.”

Daley was supposed to be at the Olympic Games in Beijing for the experience it would give him for London 2012, but Daley-mania erupted. We liked the way he dived, yes, but mostly we liked the way he handled the media and smiled all the time.

As we sat on the steps outside the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square, a young girl asked if Daley would pose for a photograph with her little brother. Daley politely asked me if that would be all right, then sprang to his feet, wrapped an arm around the youngster and beamed with genuine warmth at yet another camera. “I’d definitely like to do TV presenting — I’d love to be able to do that,” he said. “Sport and children’s TV programmes. It looks like a good job to be in and it looks fun. I’d just love anything that involves being in the media. I’ll take media studies in the sixth form.”

Daley possesses a combination of talent, cuteness, confidence and modesty that is perfect for television — and sponsors. When we met he was laden down with goodies from adidas, and Sodexo, the school meals provider, is using him to promote healthy eating among pupils.

According to his mother, Debbie, he does not boast — “He never goes into school and says I won a medal this weekend” — and his school in Plymouth, Devon, sensitive to that, holds “Tom Daley assemblies” when he is not there. “When he won BBC Young Sports Personality last year he was in Canada and the school said he won’t want to talk about it, so they announced it in assembly before he came back home,” Debbie said.

It helps that Daley takes his schooling seriously and always checks what he has missed while competing. His favourite subjects are maths and Spanish and his least favourite is, amazingly for an Olympic athlete, PE. “I don’t like doing football and rugby,” Daley said. “I prefer the trampoline and stuff I can actually do because with football and rugby I’m terrible.”

His mother said: “When he was in year four his teacher said, ‘I’ve found something Tom can’t do; he can’t catch a ball.’ I remember taking him to football lessons and he was terrible. He couldn’t kick the ball and if he did it went in the opposite direction.”

Daley, who finished seventh in the individual ten-metre platform event in Beijing, said: “My honest target for 2012? You don’t really know what’s going to happen until the year, how I’ve grown, but my dream would be to win an Olympic gold medal, or an Olympic medal even. But I don’t know what size I’m going to be. You can be too big, which means you won’t be able to do any of the hard dives and you’ll spin too slowly.”

It looks as if Daley’s partner in the synchronised event for 2012 will be Blake Aldridge, even though they fell out in China when Daley criticised Aldridge for phoning his mother between dives — they finished eighth in the final — and Aldridge criticised Daley for performing below par. The row highlighted to Debbie that someone of her son’s age should have been able to have an adult with them when they faced the media.

Ben, Tom’s youngest brother, is exhibiting some talent in the pool, but because he is 9 he would have to wait until 2016 to represent his country as the minimum age in Olympic diving is 14. It would be “amazing” if the pair could dive together, Debbie said, but she has no idea where the talent comes from. “I don’t even jump off the poolside,” she said. “Tom keeps saying to me to come up the ten-metre board and have a look off the end. I say, ‘No thank you, Tom.’ And he says, ‘You’ll be all right, it just sways a little bit.’ ”

Daley describes the adrenalin rush he gets diving off the ten-metre board

You start off coming out of the water and going on to the poolside to the steps; that's when you start feeling quite nervous. If you think about it too much you start letting the gremlins in.

You need to keep your mind clear walking up the steps. You walk up to ten metres and you look over and it's quite a nervous feeling and the butterflies start going and your heart starts beating a lot faster - because you're high up and because you're scared of doing this next dive.

You visualise what you are about to do. You visualise and practise the arm-swing and pretend what you are going to see. Then you dry yourself and you stand at the end of the board and that's where the adrenalin kicks in. You've got to try not to let it overtake you too much.

If you think about your dive too much you have to come down and start again because it does get a little bit too scary sometimes, especially learning new dives.

So, you're on the end of the board and you swing your arms and then, when you are ready, you count yourself in and you do exactly what you visualised just before and think of the process. You have to spot the water then the board. Water then board. You have to keep your eyes open.

You get used to feeling queasy. I spot the five-metre board. Lots of divers don't spot and just close their eyes and hope for the best and they are not very consistent and don't know where they are. As long as you keep your eyes open, you can't really go that drastically wrong.

If you don't see the water you know you're going to land flat and if you do see the water then you know you're safe. It seems like everything's in slow motion when you are spinning round. I feel I've got lots of time.

And when you hit the water it's a sense of relief that you haven't hurt yourself more than anything. I don't hurt myself very often, but when I do hurt myself it's pretty bad, pretty major wipeouts. You get bruises down your legs, split skin and I've hit my head twice.