WE CAN BE BOLEROS
Intense relationship of ice dance legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean revealed in ITV drama
MILLIONS still remember it: the music starting, the two kneeling skaters swaying hypnotically around each other, and the hairs on the backs of our necks rising.
It was instantly clear that we were watching pure art, and the magic of that gold-medal winning routine by Torvill and Dean at the Winter Olympics in 1984 has never gone away.
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But the harmony between the two young Nottinghamshire ice dancers was reserved for the rink.
Although the 24million UK viewers who saw the Bolero routine live were convinced the pair must be in love, behind the scenes the partnership was marred by fiery rows, jealousy and Chris’s marital tribulations.
Now ITV is putting the story of their early years at the centre of its Christmas Day schedule, with a two-hour drama starring Mr Selfridge’s Poppy Lee Friar as Jayne Torvill and Game Of Thrones’ Will Tudor as Christopher Dean.
It will chart their “private, intense” relationship — but will not cover the years after their Olympic glory, when the cracks began to appear in public.
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Perfectionist Chris, now 60, was seen bullying Jayne during a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
Meanwhile Jayne, now 61, suffered years of grief for focusing on skating and leaving it too late to have kids.
But the perfect chemistry on the rink was always an act.
Jayne has said of those times: “We’re taking a role when we perform. From performing so much, we’ve learned to be different people.
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“We were in love for the two minutes that we were dancing.”
Meanwhile, the source of Chris’s troubled love life could be traced back to a difficult childhood.
When he was just six his mother Mavis left the family home in the mining village of Calverton and his father Colin’s “friend” Betty moved in on the same day.
No explanation was ever made for his mum’s departure and she did not even tell Chris when she moved back into the area a couple of years later.
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After a brief reconciliation, it would be another 30 years before they spoke again.
Chris found his escape from a difficult home life and a future of manual labour when he discovered his calling aged ten.
He has said: “My dad worked eight-hour shifts down the pit and I had always thought I was going to be a miner. Then I got some skates for Christmas.”
Meanwhile, newsagent’s daughter Jayne, from Nottingham, had fallen for the sport aged eight following an after-school trip to the local ice rink.
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For years the two youngsters practised at the same skating centre, but with different partners.
They only teamed up in 1975 when they both found themselves without partners, and Chris’s coach suggested they try getting together.
Chris was 16, and already training to be a policeman, and Torvill was 17 and a clerk in an insurance firm.
And despite decades of denials that their had ever been any spark of romance between them, five years ago Jayne admitted that she lost her heart — briefly.
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She recalled of that day: “When I first saw Chris, I fell in love with him. But then we started skating together, that was it, it was done.”
However, Chris revealed that just once, their all-business attitude slipped — when in the back of a coach as teenagers “there might have been some kissing”.
But on the ice, they knew they were a perfect match, with Jayne having the dancing skills to pull off the creativity of Chris’s choreography.
In 1980, the pair came fifth at the Winter Olympics in New York, giving them the confidence to give up their day jobs to pursue Olympic glory.
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In a bid to bring emotion and story-telling to competition skating, they signed up Michael Crawford, star of Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.
Michael, now 76, later recalled: “I taught them to act.”
He was rinkside when all their hard work paid off on Valentine’s Day at the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, in the then-Yugoslavia.
With a whole nation tuning in — and even Parliament adjourning to allow members to watch live — their flowing dance to Ravel’s Bolero scored perfect sixes from all nine judges for artistic interpretation.
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It won them gold and instant global superstardom.
Having been amateurs until that point, the working-class duo then turned professional in order to make some cash — unfortunately barring themselves from further Olympics.
The nation’s sweethearts also disappointed the country by going off to marry other people.
Jayne wed sound engineer Phil Christensen in 1990 and Chris walked down the aisle with French ice dancer Isabelle Duchesnay in 1991.
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It seemed their heyday was behind them — until it was decided to allow professionals at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
They decided to try for gold again, but the pressure was enormous.
A fly-on-the-wall documentary following their preparations showed Chris calling her a “dead weight”.
As she broke down in tears, he ranted on, jeering: “It’s no good f****ing crying. I’ve got no sympathy.”
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Later Chris claimed the moment of rage had been a one off, but also admitted: “I do the talking and she does the listening.
“She is far more laid-back and easy-going and will follow rather than lead. I’m the other way round — I need to lead.”
Cracks were appearing elsewhere in the fairytale.
Chris’s marriage was breaking up at the time.
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Isabelle filed for divorce in 1993, in the run-up to the Games, admitting she was jealous of how close her husband had been to Jayne.
She said: “I felt that he had two women in his life.
"Because his work was more important, that automatically made Jayne more important because she was his work.”
After all the effort, the skaters — and the nation — were heartbroken when they left Norway with a bronze.
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Months later, in October 1994, Chris married American skater Jill Trenary.
They had two sons, Jack and Sam, before eventually, once again, Chris’s work commitments and rumours of another romance ended the marriage.
This time it was his closeness to Dancing On Ice judge Karen Barber, after the ITV show began in 2006 with Chris and Jayne as coaches.
Karen’s husband Stephen Pickavance, another coach on the show, even confronted the champion.
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Stephen said: “I said to him, ‘Chris, I have to ask you, are you seeing my wife?’ He looked at me and he said, ‘No Stephen, not at all. Karen and I are just good friends’.”
But Chris split with wife Jill in 2010, and the truth came out when he was photographed kissing Karen in January 2011.
Soon they were officially an item and now share a home in the US.
Meanwhile, on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2013, Jayne revealed she had mourned for years about not having her own kids.
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She said: “As a couple skating together it’s easy for the guy to go off and start a family, it wouldn’t affect his skating, whereas for me it would have stopped what we were doing.
“So I left it quite late. And I was into my forties by then.”
First she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and then tried IVF, before finally adopting two children — Kieran, now 15, and Jessica, 11 — and getting her happy ending.
She has said: of the first time she met baby Kieran: “He actually reached out to me. These things are meant to happen and I’m so lucky.”
- Torvill & Dean is on on ITV at 9.15pm on Christmas Day.
Torvill and Dean skate together for the first time in four years on Dancing on Ice
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