'Arguing Is Just Excess Energy'

Dancing on Ice judges Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean talk frankly about their abiding friendship and reveal how they always manage to stay cool

It’s been four years since they last worked together on Dancing on Ice and they now live continents apart. But it would take more than thousands of miles to put an iceberg-shaped dent in the friendship of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

The Olympic champions met in the 1970s when they began skating together as teenagers. So, after 43 years of friendship, it’s refreshing to hear that they still haven’t run out of conversation.

‘We talk most days,’ Jayne, 60, reveals. ‘We do FaceTime, even if there’s nothing much to discuss. Sometimes it’s just, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

‘Oh, I’m just cooking…’ Christopher, 59, interjects with a smile.

Given their mesmerising chemistry on ice and their close friendship away from the rink, the ‘Have they or haven’t they?’ question has dogged the Nottingham-born duo most of their careers. Yet they’ve always insisted that, while it’s the longest relationship of either of their lives, romance has never been on the agenda – in case it damaged their skating partnership.

‘When I first saw Chris, I fell in love with him, but then we started skating together and that was it, it was done. People find that hard to understand,’ Jayne explained a few years ago.