When filming starts today for Dancing on Ice, it should give ex-Olympic skier Graham Bell a chance to reunite with Team GB pals Torvill and Dean.
And there’s plenty for the new contestant to reminisce about from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo…
While the figure skaters were busy taking home a gold medal, a boozy young Graham was apprehended by police at the top of a flagpole, in the process of stealing its flag.
Graham, 54, laughs: “I was a teenage tearaway back in ’84. I met them back in the day.
"They were focused on their medal, because they competed at the very end.
“I’d finished my downhill event and had a week of just causing trouble in Sarajevo.
“I went off the rails on a big bender.”
He says he “shinned up a flagpole” then saw to his horror that his pals has disappeared, and below him instead were the police – in what was then communist Yugoslavia.
Graham says: “They took me off to the police station… but let me keep the flag, which was incredible. It’s still at home.
“I don’t know if I was arrested or not because I don’t speak the language.”
January’s Dancing on Ice, with Torvill and Dean as judges, begins filming today at Alexandra Palace in North London.
