With the start of a new term, teachers, parents and celebrities are joining forces in the ongoing war against bullying in schools.

And Olympic athlete Tom Daley, and his Oscar-winning husband Dustin Lance Black, have taken up arms to join the fight.

They have both opened up and shared their experiences of homophobic bullying in schools in a video for the Diana Award Anti-Bullying Campaign’s #Back2School initiative.

‘They threw stuff at me’

Daley, 23, said: “For the first few years at school, I had the best time, but when I qualified for the Olympics things took a bit of a turn.

“I came back from Beijing [Olympics in 2008] and everything changed. They took the mick out of what I was wearing on the diving board; they would throw stuff at me at lunchtime.”

The bullying became so bad that diving - the talent that has made Daley into a role model for so many pupils - became a burden.

Black added: “Imagine if you could tell yourself as a kid, ‘That thing you’re being bullied for might get you an Academy Award or an Olympic medal one day.’”

A call to action from the charity resulted in thousands of old (slightly awkward) school photos being shared on Twitter.

With each picture, a piece of advice for victims of bullying was given, resulting in a lovely bubble of support found with the #Back2Schools hashtag. 

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