Saturday Night Takeaway 2018

Funny how this is all being taken as gospel when the story about SMTV Live’s return being delayed was dismissed as tabloid nonsense.

Clearly this incident has happened, but there were no serious injuries and it sounds to me like details about him arguing with police officers are probably heavily exaggerated. You know, like tabloids do to sell papers, like with the SMTV story. It’s a bit premature to talk about Dec having to go solo...

The fact he was breathylised and arrested is certainly true though, whatever the other details are.

They'll be those at ITV Towers genuinely concerned about a colleagues very public fall from grace.

They'll be those at ITV Towers genuinely concerned about what they'll be putting out at 7pm on Saturday night.

And they'll be one at ITV Towers genuinely considering Scarlett Moffat's Saturday Night Takeaway.

A multi NTA-winning celebrity going through personal turmoil and addiction being hounded by the press until an incident occurs that jeopardises his career as a very popular ITV presenter.

Now where have I heard that before?

Nobody's been found dead in Ant's swimming pool at least.

There's been plenty of people that are on screen today who have previously been convicted of drink driving.

Alastair Stewart for example, who was ironically fronting Police, Camera, Action at the time and was banned from driving and though initially banned from fronting the series, hosted a revived series as part of his community service sentence as far as I'm aware. And now he still remains on screen as one of ITV News's main anchors.

For Ant, the repercussions could potentially be more severe given he is fronting a family-orientated show. But rather than reprimand him for this, ITV really need to look at his mental wellbeing and whether he has fully recuperated from the issues he faced last year. They have faced a busy work schedule the past few months with preparations for SNT as well as long days recording the BGT auditions.

SNT may go on hiatus, it depends how the news pans out over the next few days and how they can come back just days after the incident happened. It's too early to say yet. If it does then I would be very surprised if they return for BGT and rather have an extended period of leave right up to I'm A Celeb in November.

ITV needs to watch it self here, in its case of duty of care, your right ITV needs to look at his mental wellbeing instead of its profits.

BGT is a bit tricky as the auditions have been recorded and I can't imagine ITV will cancel this series as it would leave a hole in the schedule and lots of job losses.

Whatever happens, I can see Suzuki on the phone in the morning pulling their sponsor deal for SNT.

The difference with BGT of course though is the auditions are in the can, though actually that could work in their favour and be an ideal way for Ant to return to screen, regardless of whether they do the live shows.

Keeping it TV focused though and if the show is pulled on Saturday guess they'll just find an hour long rerun of something like The Chase to fill the slot and bring The Voice forward half an hour.

Nowhere because it's a complete load of bollocks! Press intrusion isn't a justifiable excuse for driving drunk and endagering other people lives. There's only so much sympathy you can have for somones "personal turmoil". Ant could, and clearly should, have taken a year or so out to sort himself out. He can certainly afford to...while most in his position can't. Having worked in mental health in the past rule number 1 is you still have to take account for you own actions!. "mental health problems" isn't a get out of jail free card contrary to what an alarming number of people seem to think these days.

I was merely citing the similarities, not blaming the press for his decision to commit a crime.



Just think of the scandal if he'd been driving one.