Idris Elba, Torvill and Dean receive honours at Windsor Castle

Steven McIntoshEntertainment reporterWednesday June 3, 2026

From screen icons to ice-dancing legends, a roll call of familiar British names stepped into the spotlight at Windsor Castle on Tuesday as King Charles presented a fresh round of honours.

Among them was actor Sir Idris Elba, 53, whose work in the US crime drama The Wire and the police series Luther made him a household name. He received a knighthood in the New Year Honours for services to young people.

Olympic ice dance champions Dame Jayne Torvill and Sir Christopher Dean were also recognised, each receiving a knighthood and damehood respectively for services to ice skating and voluntary service.

Actress and comedian Dame Meera Syal, celebrated for The Kumars At No 42 and Goodness Gracious Me, was honoured for services to literature, drama and charity.

Sir Idris set up the Elba Hope Foundation in 2022, with the charity focused on community empowerment, education, youth advocacy and sustainable development.

Sir Idris is currently working on a Netflix documentary about the King’s Trust, which gave him a grant aged 18

The actor first benefited from a grant from the Prince’s Trust – now the King’s Trust – when he was 18, using it to attend the National Youth Music Theatre.

Last year, it was announced that the Luther star would join the King on a documentary to mark 50 years since Charles founded the charity, with the programme due to air on Netflix this autumn.

Dame Jayne and Sir Christopher claimed Olympic gold at the 1984 Winter Games with their unforgettable Bolero routine.

They later became well known to television audiences as the faces of ITV’s celebrity competition show Dancing On Ice.

Speaking after learning of the honour, Dame Jayne, 68, said the award felt “perfect” after the pair skated together for the final time last year.

She said: “We had such a great time, we were so happy with the tour and the fact that we got through it.

“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.”

Dame Jayne Torvill has also spent more than 20 years as a celebrity ambassador for a children’s hospice in the South East, while Sir Christopher Dean has worked as a head coach and mentor for the British Ice Skating Academy of Dance.

Dame Meera Syal broke through as a writer and performer on the BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me in the late 1990s before appearing in The Kumars at No. 42 in the early 2000s.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2017 and received the Bafta Fellowship in 2023, the British Academy’s top award for a career on screen.

Dame Meera, 64, has also been an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society since 2013, after receiving what she described as “amazing” support from the charity following her father’s dementia diagnosis.

She also backs Kisharon, a charity supporting Jewish children, young people and adults with learning disabilities and autism.

Also honoured on Tuesday, Rotherham comedian Paul Elliott, best known as one half of the Chuckle Brothers, was appointed an Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for charitable service.

Paul and his late brother Barry became a fixture in British living rooms through their long-running television series ChuckleVision.

Across nearly 300 episodes in the 1990s and 2000s, the pair’s slapstick misadventures and famous line “To me, to you” made them one of the country’s best-loved comedy acts.

Elliott, 78, known as Paul Chuckle, has long supported Marie Curie as an ambassador.

The charity’s nurses cared for Barry at the end of his life, and Paul has previously praised the way they looked after his brother “with incredible care and kindness”.