BBC star Clare Balding said her gran was “disgusted” when she came out as a lesbian. The Wimbledon presenter, who is now happily married to her wife Alice Arnold, was already out to her parents by 2003, when she was outed to the public via the newspapers without her consent. But her grandmother knew nothing about her sexuality at the time.

In a devastating Desert Island Discs admission, Clare confessed to host Kirsty Young in 2013: “I said: 'Grandma I need to talk to you,' and she said: 'Yes I should think you do.' I said: 'Have you seen the paper?' and she said: 'Yes and I think it's disgusting'.

“I said: 'What do you mean? The invasion of my privacy or my lifestyle choice,' and she said: 'Both.' And I didn't talk to her for about six months after that, which was pretty difficult."

Clare hid her sexuality for almost a decade after landing her first BBC job as a trainee journalist, worried her career would “nosedive”.

She explained in 2021: “I was worried that if people discovered I was in a relationship with a woman I might be discriminated against when it came to choosing presenters on TV.

“I was brought up to think that the only 'acceptable' relationship meant being married to a man. A lot has changed in the world since then, thankfully.”

Clare said “most people were really kind and supportive” when she did come out, and she went on to become one of the Beeb’s biggest names in sports presenting.

Clare added that her father doubted she could get involved in the family horse racing business, and told her she had “no chance” of winning her well deserved RTS award for sports presenting.

She explained on the Paul McKenna podcast: “I told dad that I was up against Steve Rider, who is the loveliest man, and another very famous man. My father just went, ‘You’ve got no chance, not against them’. And then I won and you just sort of think, ‘This is quite surprising’, to my father certainly.”

Clare added: “I wanted to be my own person. I was very angry at my parents for their lack of acknowledgements for women's achievements and that made me really determined to do the things that maybe they thought women couldn't do.

“I remember when I first presented Grandstand on the BBC my father being absolutely flabbergasted.

“He didn't realise that was something any woman could do, let alone me.”