PHILIP MAILS MESSAGE TO ICE QUEEN

Friday July 18,2008

SHE was Britain’s most glamorous skating star of the Fifties, famed for her auburn hair and long legs.

Now Anne Rogers’s old admirer Prince Philip has sent a letter of warm congratulations to her 80th birthday party.

Philip, in his younger and more roistering days, was a regular visitor to Anne’s spectacular performances at the Empire Pool, Wembley – notably the long-running hit The Dancing Years On Ice, in which she co-starred with her late first husband Eddie Ward.

They were the Torvill and Dean of their day.

Philip’s message, which was read out to several hundred guests at Anne’s birthday lunch in Ascot, Berkshire, read: “I was very pleased to hear that you are celebrating your 80th birthday today. Many congratulations and I hope you enjoy the day with your family and friends. Philip.”

Said Anne at her house close to Windsor Castle: “Wasn’t that lovely of him to remember after all these years? He came often to see me skate and he always asked to meet me after the show. He was friendly, encouraging, knowledgeable and – well, of course – devastatingly handsome and attractive.”

She added somewhat bizarrely: “I remember that when I skated for him in charity performances in aid of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Playing Fields Scheme, he talked a lot about corns and warts, which seemed a subject of particular interest to him.”

One irreverent wag at the party who had the temerity to suggest that HRH’s interest might have been prompted less by Anne’s skating virtuosity than by her luscious hair and magnificent legs was regally rebuked by Ms Rogers.

Pointing to Philip’s royal cypher on the letter, surrounded by the motto Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, she demanded: “Do you know what that means – Evil be to him who evil thinks!”