Getting their skates back on for TV

More than 24million viewers watched them skate their way to Olympic gold 22 years ago.

Now Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are returning to prime-time TV after hitching their skates to the reality show bandwagon.

The couple, whose performance of Ravel's Bolero electrified the 1984 Winter Olympics, are reuniting on the ice rink for the first time in eight years to star in an ITV1 series called Dancing On Ice.

Dean, 47, and his 48-year-old skating partner - who retired from competition skating in 1988 - will be seen training celebrities such as Dame Kelly Holmes and Andi Peters to perform routines alongside professional partners in a format similar to BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing.

Torvill and Dean were awarded a record 12 perfect sixes at the Sarajevo Games in a performance which delayed both the BBC's Nine O'Clock News and a Commons debate.

Despite rumours of a romance, they always insisted their relationship was platonic. Dean lives in Colorado with his American wife Jill.

Miss Torvill, who is married to engineer Phil Christiansen, said yesterday: 'Chris and I danced together every day for 25 years so to get back together after almost a decade is just brilliant.'