COMMONWEALTH Games swimming gold medal winner Matt Clay was guest of honour at speech day at Queen's College, Taunton - his former school.

After presenting over 100 prizes, Matt entertained one of the biggest speech day audiences with an account of his Melbourne win, life at Queen's and future plans.

"I thought on the day I could win a medal, but I didn't really expect gold," said Matt.

"It was a couple of seconds after I touched that I looked up at the scoreboard and saw my name at No 1."

Matt answered several questions from pupils about his life, training regime and ambitions.

Looking back at his arrival at the school nine years ago, he said: "Coming from a state school I expected Queen's to be quite stuffy but it wasn't at all - everyone was really friendly and I soon felt totally at home."

He is taking a sabbatical from a BA in Business Administration at Bath University to pursue his dream of swimming at the 2008 Olympics.

"Before I get to Beijing I've got to get into the British team and there's four very good swimmers for two places," he said.

Afterwards Matt signed pupils' prize books and posed for photographs for swim team members.