Sound and Fury signifying... A fucking great wanker.

When I was a teenager, swimming was a massive part of my life. And through it all, I was keeping a massive secret.

I loved doing really long distance training sessions. Partly because distance freestyle was what I was best at, but mostly because it gave me time - slogging up and down the pool - almost alone with my thoughts. I say "almost alone" because, obviously, there were dozens of people all around me. But you only get to interact with them once every 400 metres or so. So you're alone with your thoughts despite being surrounded by people.

How would I tell people I was gay? Should I even tell people I was gay? What would happen if I did tell people? Would people be really uncomfortable about me in the changing rooms?

I didn't know any openly gay swimmers. At all. Not in my swimming team, not anywhere.

There was an openly gay teacher in the area who was very well known among the whole swimming community. And I heard the things people said about her behind her back.

She had me sussed out before I'd told a soul on this earth. She was my course tutor when I qualified as a swimming teacher and one day we were watching a video of a male Olympian doing technically flawless breaststroke. The 4 other women on my course were going "oh he's so hot." And I said "eh, he's not my type." She totally shot me that "yeah, I know" look.

Coming out is hard. But coming out in sport is even harder.

Although this was the 90s and there was less LGBT visibility back then, I had a pretty good idea that most of my other friends from outside sport would be totally cool.

I was way more worried about telling people from swimming.

One day my coach said to me "I think you're a bit of a closet hippie."

I just laughed because I so wanted to say "that's not the only thing I'm in the closet about."

But I didn't say it, obviously.

Almost 20 years later there are a few openly gay athletes, including Olympians and Paralympians, but surprisingly few compared to other arenas of life. So young aspiring athletes are still probably ploughing up and down swimming pools or running round tracks wondering "what's going to happen if I tell people?"

Which brings me onto Tyson Fury. A man who looks and sounds like he went "wait a minute: I can actually make a living out of punching people in the face? Awesome!"

Yes, he's currently the world champion at punching people in the face. Which must take a lot of practice at punching people in the face.

Being world champion at anything takes hard work and skill, whether your personal beliefs are harmful or not. It's a shame that being good at a thing also gives you a platform from which to vomit your homophobic and misogynistic views, but apparently it does.

And I'm not going to argue that he shouldn't be allowed to compete in the ring because of the things he says out of the ring; however dispiriting his presence in the sport may be to young LGBT boxers fighting with themselves over whether or not to come out.

But the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year - as the name suggests - isn't just about being a talented athlete. It's about being a sporting personality. And his personality is a cruel, toxic, one. Now matter how talented an athlete he is.

The BBC have refused to remove him from the shortlist of contenders (though they did suspend a gay man who criticised him). But here's the thing: The award isn't pre-determined; it's open for public vote.

The British public can tell everyone that "we don't support personalities this hateful," by voting for anyone but him. Of course, there are 11 other nominees and if all anti-Fury votes are evenly distributed among them; he might still win. So dare I suggest that we all back Jess Ennis-Hill; the subject of some of his misogynistic bile?

The way to show young LGBT people - especially young LGBT athletes - that it's OK to be who you are, and no-one agrees with Fury is to vote against him. So please do. And just maybe a few young LGBT sportspeople coming to terms with who they are will feel a little more embraced knowing Fury got shat on by a whole country of voters.

Big Brother is over for another year. Hurrah! It is now safe to tune in to channel 4 and E4 once again.

This series there were not just one, but 2 disabled housemates. Prior to this series they've had only one disabled contestant, Pete Bennett. He won.

Both Darnell and Mikey survived the entire series (I make it sound like that episode of Doctor Who, don't I?) and made it in to the final.

I also understand that the first American BB was won by an amputee.

TV companies have always been hesitant about putting disabled people on TV. Surely if nothing else, BB proves that viewers *like* having disabled people on their screens and *want* to have disabled people on their screens.

After all, if viewers didn't want to see the disabled contestants, they'd have been voted off ages ago.

The motivations for wanting to see disabled people on screen is almost certainly because they can get away with staring at someone different, which they get embarrassed about doing in real life. Or they end up having an accident. I just love it when people get so engrossed at staring at me, the lady in the wheelchair, crossing the road that they forget to look right and left themselves before stepping into traffic. But Big Brother means they can gawp at us from the safety of their sofa, without the risk of getting hit by a car.

But, motivation is irrelevant. The public have voted that they want to see disabled people on TV. Isn't it time the TV companies paid attention?

Of course, TV companies aren't paying attention. I understand from a friend that not one American TV station is covering the Paralympics. NBC even branded themselves "The Olympic Broadcaster" (or something like that), but they're not showing the Paralympics. Even though at the end of day 2, the US is at the top of the medal table. You would think disabled and non-disabled Americans alike would want to take pride in their success, especially seeing as so far their Paralympians are doing better than their Olympians did.

Here in the UK we're doing rather better. We've got six hours coverage a day via the digital "red button" option on our tellys. Then every evening there's a highlights show on one of the main channels. Those of you in countries where you're unable to watch the games on your TV might be interested to know that the torrent site UKNova is uploading the BBC's nightly highlights programme. Don't bother to ask me for an invite code though. The site doesn't do them. You just have to keep hitting the "signup" page until an account "vacancy" becomes available.

The Beeb's Paralympic website is also mostly excellent (some of the journalism is rather sloppy; for instance apparently Darren Kenny "suffers from" cerebral palsy. Even though he's just won Paralympic gold). But the video files are only available to those connecting to the net in the UK.

When Big Brother started in 2000 I never, ever imagined I'd say that there were lessons to be learned from it. Even more unbelievable is that the lesson that can be learned is that viewers want to see disabled people on TV.

NBC, the so-called "Olympic Broadcaster" could certainly learn a lot from it.