Big Interview: Torvill and Dean's last spin around the rink as iconic ice-skating duo set for Belfast show in April 2025

One last spin around the rink for the famous pair before they hang up their skates for good, and they want to make it a blockbuster; something that'll take the audience through the full story of their era-defining partnership.

A combination of greatest hits showstoppers and a joint memoir on ice, the ambitious production will pull out old favourites while giving the duo a chance to choreograph new routines for some pieces of music they've always wanted to use, but until now have never had a chance.

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean first met in the era of glam rock and space-hoppers, put together in 1974 as promising teenage athletes who quickly found their partnership sparked magic out on the ice – not to mention a decades-spanning friendship.

For the farewell tour, which hits Belfast's SSE Arena in April next year, they want to get right back to the beginning, bringing back some of the very first dances they performed together. But how has it been to skate down memory lane?

“Well, thank goodness for YouTube,” Torvill tells the News Letter. “We have moments we definitely remember, but some of the precise holds we were in, or which hand is in which, or the steps, not quite; we did spend a long time going back to look at the parts we're going to perform.”

And as spry and athletic as the pair still visibly are, especially for two people in their mid-sixties, Dean admits that digging out routines from 40 to 50 years ago has presented a challenge.

“Some of it, we've adapted to an age-appropriate scale,” he smiles.

“We do want to get back to what the Seventies were like; we'll have images moving across screens, memorabilia, our old routines.

"Then moving on from our early skates, we'll take people through our story with dialogue and performance.

“It'll be key moments, so that people who have followed us will be able to say “oh yes, I remember that” - nostalgia, but also a celebration as it will be our last time skating together.”

The pair are famed for their thematic routines, blending music, costuming and movement into a single whole, most famously the flamenco-influenced performance to Ravel's Bolero that won gold at the 1984 Olympics.

Now one of the nation's favourites, at the time it was considered a daring move, not least as it involved working out a slight loophole in Olympic rules.

Figure skating dances must be four minutes long, the Olympics say, though they're allowed to run at most 10 seconds longer or shorter than that. Torvill and Dean's problem? Their arrangement of Bolero lasted four minutes and 28 seconds.

But they realised the time limit only kicked in once skaters first put a blade to the ice; by letting the music play for exactly 18 seconds before going out, they could fit in the full spread of the dramatic tune.

Definitely a gamble, but one that paid off when they swept the board with full marks from every judge – the first and only time that's happened at the Olympics.

That boundary-pushing inventiveness stood Torvill and Dean in good stead throughout their competitive career, as well as in their coaching roles on ITV's hit Dancing On Ice, which returns to screens for its 17th series early next year.

Pioneering a series of tours wowing crowds around the world, they've been regular visitors to Northern Ireland since the late Eighties, back then playing the likes of Dundonald Ice Bowl.

“Our last show in Belfast was in 2010, with Dancing On Ice,” remembers Dean. “Everybody loves coming to Ireland – I think the place we've visited the most was The Crown [Bar]. And we love the Giant's Causeway.”

Easily the best known figure skaters in the world, having spent years touring as international celebrities and with a host of championships under their belts as well as their Olympic gold, eventually Torvill and Dean came to the conclusion that they'd done all they could and it was time to call it quits.

That was in 1998.

They were lured out of their first retirement by the opportunity of Dancing On Ice. Now heading towards retirement number two, it's hard not to wonder what the pair would have thought if, when they first hung up their skates at the end of the last century, someone had told them they'd actually still be performing together in 2025.

Says Dean: “We wouldn't have believed it.

“We have to put in the context that our skating career was quite short. From starting to skate together to the Olympics was 10 years, then we had a professional skating career which was also about 10 years.

“But then Dancing On Ice has been with us for nearly 20 years. Really, it's what has kept us on the ice together.”

Next year's tour takes in nine cities over the course of four weeks, and after that it's the end – no more Torvill and Dean. Backstage at a Glaswegian arena in May, after the last dance of the last date of the last tour, it'll no doubt be an emotional scene.

“We never dwell on the past, but as you get older you start to reminisce,” says Dean. “The places we've been, the people we've seen and the people we've met from queens to presidents to celebrities. They're private memories, but we will be thinking of them.

“One thing that might keep us together is that we like to tell that story, and people might be interested in hearing about it.”

But the pair aren't looking that far ahead yet; too much to do, they say, from the TV show to choreographing and rehearsing with a 15-strong troupe of ice dancers they're bringing along for next year's big numbers.

Still, Torvill confirms she wants to make sure she brings home a special keepsake of their last moments as a duo.

Exploring their last run of shows during our chat in the SSE Arena's VIP dressing room this week, Dean asked her if she thinks she'll keep the last pair of skates she wears with him.

Her bittersweet reply: “Oh yes. Forever. I've got them all, I saved them all.”

Before that final day, a run of shows blending fresh moves with old crowd-pleasers, and none could be bigger than Bolero.

It's easy to imagine that after 40 years they're fed up with Ravel, even though it's guaranteed to be the biggest barnstormer every night.

In fact, back in the day they originally tried to tour without it in their repertoire – a mistake, they say, born of them still being in a competition mindset that required brand new material every year, and all old dances thrown into an icy bin.

“We thought, the Olympics are done, we're over Bolero and we're creating our new skating company doing new adventurous things all over the world,” says Dean. “The promoter was horrified.

“He said, “What? You're not doing Bolero? No, you're doing Bolero”. We didn't realise we were expected to be more like a rock band on tour.”

Torvill adds: “Then we realised the response of the audience – they'd been waiting to see it.”

The song is still close to their hearts, to the point that it's even Dean's ringtone.

And that's just how it should be. After all, what would a Torvill and Dean show be without Bolero? It'd be like going to see the Rolling Stones only for them not to perform Satisfaction.

“Well, exactly,” smiles Dean. “You'd feel cheated.”

l Torvill and Dean's farewell show, Our Last Dance, plays the SSE Arena on April 15 and 16, 2025. Tickets are available now.