Ant McPartlin pleaded guilty to drink-driving in April 2018 and was fined £86,000 — believed at the time to be the largest fine ever imposed in Britain for the offence — and banned from driving for 20 months, after a three-car collision in south-west London.

McPartlin, one half of Ant and Dec, the most successful presenting duo in British television, was more than twice the legal limit when his car collided with two other vehicles in March 2018. Several people suffered minor injuries. He expressed shame and horror at what he had done and apologised to those affected.

The crash was the public collapse of a private struggle. McPartlin had developed an addiction to prescription painkillers following knee surgery in 2015, later describing how stronger opiate-based medication and alcohol took hold. He first entered rehabilitation in 2017, returned to work, and after the crash stepped away from all presenting duties to go back into treatment.

The consequences reshaped ITV's biggest shows. Declan Donnelly presented Britain's Got Talent and the end of Saturday Night Takeaway alone, to widespread sympathy, and Holly Willoughby later joined him in Australia for I'm a Celebrity while McPartlin took the rest of the year off. Takeaway itself was rested for a year so the duo could return together.

Donnelly's loyalty became a central part of the story. He later said he was proud of his partner for taking responsibility and doing the work to recover, and has described the period as the hardest of their three-decade career together, which began when they met as teenagers on the children's drama Byker Grove.

McPartlin has since spoken about being diagnosed with ADHD in 2018, saying the diagnosis helped him understand patterns in his behaviour, including links between the condition and alcohol dependency. He returned to television in 2019 and has described his sober years as among the happiest of his life.

The episode is still the reference point for how British television handles a star's addiction crisis: immediate accountability in court, a record financial penalty, a complete withdrawal from work, and a comeback that depended on the audience believing the recovery was real. In McPartlin's case, remarkably, it was.

The fine itself reflected his earnings as much as the offence: magistrates set financial penalties by reference to income, and McPartlin was among the highest-paid presenters in the country. That detail shaped public reaction, with some arguing the record sum was simply the system working as designed for a wealthy defendant, and others treating it as a marker of how seriously the court viewed a crash that could have ended far worse. McPartlin did not contest the charge, pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and accepted the ban without complaint — a course his supporters say set the tone for everything that followed.