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DERMOTT MURNAGHAN: Sir Elton John is no stranger to philanthropy of course, the star supports more than 50 charities ranging from saving rainforests to the battle against HIV and AIDS.  I went to meet Sir Elton yesterday backstage at a concert to raise money for Sports Aid, that’s a charity that helps the next generation of British sports starts by giving them financial support in those very important early and formative years.  Sir Elton spoke passionately also about gay rights saying recent events in Russia had put the movement into reverse and that if Jesus Christ were alive today he would support gay marriage.  I started by asking Sir Elton why he is so passionate about helping our young sports people. 

ELTON JOHN: Well I’m a big lover of the young and in my musical career I sponsor eight young musicians at the Royal Academy and because we have a sports management company at my management company now, we thought it would be a good idea to set up a similar foundation to help young sportsmen to get a great every year to help them from the ages of 12 to 18 and so hopefully we will raise half a million tonight and that will all go to the fund.  So for the next eight years it means twenty kids can get a £2000 grant that normally couldn’t get any money and it is just a way of supplementing their incomes and giving them some hope for the future.  I am a big lover of youth, I love young musicians and young athletes and I just wanted to do something to help some aspiring athletes who are maybe running into a cul-de-sac and couldn’t get any funding.

DM: And that’s all important, those early stages.  How are you going to choose the ones that get the grants, that get the funds?

ELTON JOHN: I think that will be a decision made by our company and the people associated on the Foundation board.  It will be Olympic sports, the whole gamut of Olympic sports, not golf and not football but all the other sports, cycling, equestrianism, swimming, judo, boxing, wrestling – if judo is still in there, I think it was taken out at the last Olympics or wresting.  But anyway, we represent a lot of young athletes, Laura Trott and Jason Kenny who are both Olympic medal winners, Geraint Thomas who got chosen for the Tour de France this week for the fifth time, Richard Kilty the world indoor 60 metre champion, Bob Jungels the young Luxembourg cyclist, Adam Yates an amazing cyclist and Ben Swift, another amazing cyclist.  So we’ve got a lot of talent on our hands already and we’re looking to explore other sports other than cycling and other than athletics but I like to concentrate on the Olympics sports and the sports that don’t get the funding and the athletes that don’t get the help.  Every footballer has an agent so it’s not really worth doing that, it’s the other sports that need help and encouragement and to earn money outside of what they do.

DM: Tell me then, flowing from the Olympics, concentrating on Olympic sports here, 2012, we all remember just what a great summer of sport that was. 

ELTON JOHN: It was so inspiring for everybody, it was great for the country.  That one evening when there were three track golds for example and I got so into the cycling at the velodrome and on the road, I think Bradley Wiggins did so much by winning the Tour de France and got us all so interested in the cycling and it was an amazing, amazing feeling in this country and it was an example of what we can do if we are encouraged and can reach our goals and we can match the best but we have to encourage people at a young age and give them some hope.  I am just trying to do this because music and sport are great common denominators, most sportsmen want to be musicians and most musicians want to be sportsmen.  I come from a footballing family, my cousin played for Nottingham Forest, Roy Dwight, scored the first goal in the 1957 Cup Final against Luton, so I’ve always been involved in sport and I’ve always loved sport.  So to be able to help these young kids, you know, football and sport bring people together and it’s a great thing. I’ve always loved sport since I was six or seven years of age so I’ve been doing this Foundation to help people.  My son, he won’t need a grant because I’ll be able to afford to pay it but it is the future of son’s generation and the generation after him and the ones that are coming through at ten or eleven years’ old. 

DM: Can you see him getting interested in sport, is he kicking a ball around already? 

ELTON JOHN: Oh yes, he loves sport, he plays tennis, he’s playing tennis, he loves to kick a ball around, they both do and it’s … I just hope that they become sportsmen because it’s a great way of meeting people. 

DM: What, not go into music?

ELTON JOHN: Playing sport is such a great social thing, it’s great to have a game of soccer or a game of tennis or a game of rugby or whatever, it breeds a social thing where you are there with your mates or you make new friends and you travel and you play other people and you make new friends, so it is a wonderful social thing to do as well as a sporting athletic thing to do. 

DM: Tell me then, with this passion, and you are demonstrating here and the way you are joining up the two activities, sport and music, do you approach a concert like tonight in a slightly different way?  Does it mean more to you? 

ELTON JOHN: Well you know you’ve got to do … I mean every concert is different, I approach it as if it’s my last concert.  I always try and go out and give it my best.  I’m very lucky to have a whole catalogue of songs that I can choose from and I still love singing those songs because they are very good songs so I don’t get bored with what I do.  Each concert is a test and this time last week we were playing in Leigh to 18,000 at the Rugby League club and now we’re playing to 5,000 people in a very sedate setting in Stoke Park and on Thursday night I was playing at my house in a gallery of 100 people raising money for AIDs so three different shows in a week and you’ve got to pull them all off.  If I can’t do that by now, I’ve been doing it for 47 years I should be able to do it. 

DM: I’ve got to ask you this question as well, there’s another festival taking place this very evening and over this weekend with a few more thousand people involved, a couple of hours west of where we are now, I’m talking about Glastonbury.  Are we ever going to see Sir Elton there? 

ELTON JOHN: I don't know, I’ve never really been asked.  I played Bestival last year but Glastonbury is the crème de la crème of festivals.  If you look at all the main acts that are on the stage and they are great, the headline acts, then you go to the other stages and you see every important young musician that is coming up, every important young musician that’s great and I think that’s a huge credit to Glastonbury.  Just look at the smaller stages and you see everybody you want to see in music practically.  Any time people come together to celebrate music in a joyous atmosphere can’t be bad, come on.  

DM: You mentioned there and we all know about the huge amount of work you’ve done in particular for AIDS charities and the huge amount of money you’ve raised.  You wrote an article in the Independent today along with Norman Fowler, the former Secretary of State for Health of course.  You talk very passionately  and very interestingly about the vast strides we have made in this country when it comes to gay rights, to understanding, to civil partnerships and equal marriage and things like that but you make the point that there is still a lot of work to be done in the UK and in actual fact things have got worse for a lot of gay and transgender people in many, many other countries around the world. 

ELTON JOHN: Oh yes.  Globally we seem to have gone backwards over the last 18 months in certain areas and I mentioned this on stage on Thursday night, I said as long as I’m alive I will fight for people’s rights.  Anybody whose human rights are wronged or taken away from them, I will try and fight them. I will try and go to Russia, I am going to Russia in December, November and I will try and meet Putin, I will try and talk to him.  I don't know what good it will do but unless you build a bridge, it’s no good putting up a wall and saying I’m not talking to these people, the only thing that gets solved is by talking to people and if I have the talent or any talent of trying to help in that situation then I’m going to try and do it.  I may not achieve anything but I have to try and there are so many people out there who are living a life of hell and I’m living a life of luxury and I have my human rights intact.  As an AIDS organisation we support the marginalised as well, the very, very poor people that are getting left behind, the drug users, the people in prison.  If we leave people behind in society then society is going to crumble.  On this journey of AIDs and human rights we have to try and take everyone with us and I deeply believe that and many people might disagree with me but if anyone doesn’t have their basic civil rights I get crazy.

DM: One of the other points you make in the article when it comes to what more needs to be done in the United Kingdom is you feel that the Church of England’s attitude is, let’s be diplomatic about this, is not really very helpful at the moment.

ELTON JOHN: No, but there are signs of hope.  I think the new Archbishop of Canterbury is doing a good job so far, the new Pope has done wonderful … I mean he has excited me so much by his humanity and taking everything down to humility of faith no matter what it is, whatever faith you have, what religion you have, who you believe in, what you believe in, he’s stripped it down to the bare bones and said it is all basically about love and taking everybody in inclusiveness and that has to be encouraged by the Church of England as well.  We have a long way to go but great strides have been made, let’s not you know … thirty years ago I couldn’t have imagined this would have happened in my country so I’m very grateful for that.

DM: Do you ever think the Church should allow its clergy, same sex clergy, to get married?

ELTON JOHN: Of course and I don’t see why Catholic priests have to be celibate, it’s crazy.  These are old and stupid things and the church hierarchy might be up in arms about it, the traditionalists, but times have changed, we live in a different time.  If Jesus Christ was alive today I cannot see him as the Christian person that he was and the great person that he was, saying this could not happen.  He was all about love and compassion and forgiveness and trying to bring people together and that’s what the church should be about.

DM: And lastly, when are we going to see you and David getting married?  

ELTON JOHN: Well we can’t get married this year because we had a civil partnership and I think the government kind of messed that one up so we can’t get married until next year.  However when we do do it, it will be very quiet and very off the cuff.  We had our big shebang when we had our civil union but we will and it is a great opportunity to take advantage of the new laws and to celebrate it.  We are very lucky in this country to have that advantage and that position to be in, of being able to marry your partner.  It’s a huge way, we’ve come a long, long way and for that the church deserves credit.  

DM: Sir Elton John speaking to me yesterday.