Freddie Flintoff has returned to TV screens with Bullseye over the festive season, but he has been candid about the personal struggles with alcohol and mental health that he battled for much of his life
12:43, 29 Dec 2025Updated 13:02, 29 Dec 2025
(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, one of Britain’s most beloved television figures, has made his comeback to our screens with Bullseye during the Christmas period.
The ex-England cricket star enjoyed an extraordinary career at the pinnacle of professional sport, yet also endured countless deeply personal battles that wreaked havoc on his life and family relationships.
Though celebrated as the champion of the legendary 2005 Ashes series, Flintoff wrestled with both bulimia and excessive drinking throughout his sporting days, although he never labelled himself as an alcoholic.
(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
The cricket icon has previously acknowledged that his drinking habits, which he used to conceal his mental health difficulties, put his wife “through hell”. Despite this, the couple have remained together for 19 years.
Rachel Wools has stood by her husband through the most challenging periods. In 2022, they faced another ordeal together when Flintoff was involved in a near-fatal accident whilst filming for Top Gear.
In his Daily Mail column a decade ago, Flintoff disclosed the extent of his drinking habits, even well into his 30s.
Freddie Flintoff has struggled with alcohol in the past(Image: Photo by Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images)
He confessed he never truly matured when it came to alcohol, frequently consuming shots and bizarre mixtures, none of which he actually enjoyed. Flintoff then explained why he no longer drinks.
“I’m 37 now and I don’t touch drink for lots of reasons,” he wrote in 2015. “First, it can turn me into an idiot. Secondly, I get really fat when I drink and I don’t want to get really fat.
“Above all, I don’t drink now because I’ve used drink in the past to change my feelings. Whether it was feelings of insecurity or depression I’d drink in the hope that I wouldn’t go on feeling that way.
“Three or four pints in you feel like cock of the walk. But then you keep going and you end up in oblivion. And the next day you wake up and, however bad your problems felt without a hangover, with a hangover they’re always a lot worse.”
Freddie Flintoff drank heavily well into his 30s(Image: 2025 Philip Brown)
In 2017, Flintoff shared the pivotal moment that led him to quit alcohol. During an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live Sport, he disclosed an incident on a plane where, whilst intoxicated, he mistakenly tried to urinate in the cockpit.
“I open the door, pull my pants down,” he explained. “I fling my head back. I open my eyes, I’m not in the toilet – I’m in the cockpit! There’s two German pilots, turned around and she says, ‘Get him off my plane!’
“So then, like all football fans do when they’ve disgraced themselves, the security comes through, I get marched off the plane. I’ve now got to walk past the line of a hundred yards of England football fans who now think I’m the Messiah! They think I’m the man, this is brilliant, that I’m a football fan.
“I was skulking down, I had my head down as they’re chanting my name. But I’m not happy with that, it’s something that will never happen again and one of the many reasons I stopped drinking.”