Sir Idris Elba, Dame Jayne Torvill, Sir Christopher Dean and Dame Meera Syal were among those honoured by King Charles at Windsor Castle.
Sir Idris Elba, Olympic ice dancers Dame Jayne Torvill and Sir Christopher Dean, and actress and comedian Dame Meera Syal were among the public figures to receive honours from King Charles at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.
Sir Idris, 53, best known for roles in The Wire and Luther , received a knighthood awarded in the New Year Honours for services to young people. The recognition reflects a strand of work that has run alongside his acting career, including the Elba Hope Foundation, which he founded in 2022 to support community empowerment, education, youth advocacy and sustainable development.
The actor has also spoken publicly about the role of youth opportunity in his own career. At 18, he used a grant from the Prince’s Trust, now the King’s Trust, to attend the National Youth Music Theatre. He is also set to work with the King on a Netflix documentary marking 50 years since Charles founded the charity, due to air this autumn.
Dame Jayne and Sir Christopher were recognised for services to ice skating and voluntary service. The pair became Olympic champions at the 1984 Winter Games with their celebrated Bolero routine and later became widely known to television audiences through ITV’s Dancing On Ice.
After learning of the honour, Dame Jayne, 68, said the timing felt right after the pair performed on ice for the final time last year. “It was a big thing for us to mark our career before retirement, and then receiving this award at the end of the year, it’s just finished everything. It’s perfect,” she said.
The honours also recognised their work away from competition and television. Dame Jayne has served for more than two decades as a celebrity ambassador for a children’s hospice in the South East, while Sir Christopher has been a head coach and mentor for the British Ice Skating Academy of Dance.
Dame Meera, 64, was honoured for services to literature, drama and charity. She broke through as a writer and performer on Goodness Gracious Me in the late 1990s and later appeared in The Kumars at No. 42 . She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2017 and received the Bafta Fellowship in 2023.
Comedian Paul Elliott, 78, best known as Paul Chuckle from the Chuckle Brothers, was also made an MBE for charitable service. Elliott has been a supporter and ambassador for Marie Curie, whose nurses cared for his brother and comedy partner Barry before his death.
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