Torvill and Dean celebrate retirement with honours from King

Ice skating champion Sir Christopher Dean joked with the King that he is enjoying retirement and would “recommend it” as he was honoured alongside Dame Jayne Torvill at Windsor Castle.

The ice dance duo were among 68 people to receive awards from the King on Tuesday, alongside Luther star Sir Idris Elba and comedian and actress Dame Meera Syal.

The pair made history when they took home the Olympic gold at the 1984 Winter Games for their “Bolero” performance, and later became the faces of celebrity competition show Dancing On Ice.

Asked about their conversations with Charles, Dame Jayne said he asked whether they were still skating and told her he was “so pleased” to recognise their achievements.

Dame Jayne Torvill and Sir Christopher Dean were honoured at Windsor Castle (Andrew Matthews/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Andrew Matthews

She said: “He said ‘Are you coaching or anything?’, and I said ‘no, we’ve just retired now’. We did our last tour last year, and that the body was deciding that that was our last tour, but we enjoyed it.”

Sir Christopher said: “I had a similar conversation. I also said: ‘We’ve retired, and I recommend it’, and he had a little laugh.”

“It’s a wonderful day, and to be here in this setting – it’s amazing to be in Windsor Castle, and all the traditional elements as well,” he added.

News of their damehood and knighthood arrived at the end of a year in which the pair retired from performing after their UK “farewell” tour, which culminated in their home city of Nottingham in July.

Asked what it was like to step off the ice for the final time together, Dame Jayne, 68, said: “It was a mixture of emotions, but we were so happy to have been able to do that tour, and you always want to give a good performance, and we felt that that show as a whole was one of the best performances.”

“And we prepared ourselves for that,” Sir Christopher, 67, added. “To put a tour like that together takes about a year and a half, and so that preparation is always in the back of your mind that this is the final performance.

“A lot of people say, ‘won’t you miss it?’, but we feel like we’ve achieved what we’ve achieved, and we don’t need to do any more. The body doesn’t want to do any more. And so, for us to be able to do that in a style that we felt was fitting for us, it was great.”

Dame Jayne found out about her damehood around three days before her dance partner – realising he had not yet received a letter when she phoned him to celebrate the news.

“It was a bit of an awkward situation for both of us,” she said.

Sir Christopher added: “I wanted to be, and was, happy for Jayne, but at the same time – and Jayne felt the same as well – that you didn’t know how to act, neither of us did, did we?”

Dame Jayne spoke to the King (Jordan Pettitt/PA)PA Wire/PA Images - Jordan Pettitt

After Dame Jayne decided to find out why her dance partner had not received a similar letter, it transpired that it had been sent to the wrong place due to an incorrect postcode.

“I got it about two weeks later,” Sir Christopher added with a laugh.

Asked about their experience watching celebrities and the public fall in love with ice skating thanks to Dancing On Ice, Dame Jayne said: “It’s lovely for us because we’ve always been passionate about it, and some of our celebrities, if we run into them, we say, ‘Are you still skating?’.

“A lot of them say, ‘No, definitely not’, but there are some that still do it, and they like it. Sam (Aston), Chesney from Coronation Street, he still skates. We’ve had so many.”

Also among those to be honoured on Tuesday were 93-year-old Betty Brown, thought to be the oldest surviving victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, and Paul Elliott – best known for being one half of the comedy duo Chuckle Brothers.

The King’s eye surgeon, Professor Philip Bloom, and Simon Eccles, a plastic surgeon to the King and Queen, were made Lieutenants of the Royal Victorian Order – an honour in the gift of the King, to recognise distinguished service to the monarch and the royal family.