The ice dance pair, who won gold at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and then bronze in Lillehammer 10 years later, confirmed the affair in an interview with Piers Morgan.

The episode of Morgan’s “Life Stories” has not yet been broadcast but the former Daily Mirror editor released the news via Twitter.

Torvill has been married to sound engineer Phil Christensen since 1990 and has a son and a daughter with him.

Dean had been married for 16 years to former ice-skating champion Jill Trenary , his second wife, but they split up in 2010 and he is now dating Dancing On Ice judge Karen Barber.

Dean’s previous wife was Canadian skater Isabelle Duchesnay and he admitted that she had found his relationship with Torvill difficult to cope with.

“She used to say there were three people in our marriage,” he said.

For years Torvill and Dean denied there was ever anything romantic between them with Torvill saying two years ago: “We decided very early on that if we had slept together we couldn’t have skated.”

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The pair have been mentors on Dancing On Ice since 2006 but it was their exploits at the Winter Olympics that made them international superstars.

In Sarajevo they achieved a perfect score for their now famous Bolero routine and nearly 24 million people watched them compete in Lillehammer to make it one of the most watched sporting events in British television history.