Ant and Dec game show millionaire spared jail over death threats to Good Samaritan and his dog

A thug who scooped a million pounds on an Ant and Dec game show has been spared jail for threatening to kill the man who tried to help him turn his life around.

Red or Black? winner Nathan Hageman also threatened to kill Jason Gollop's dog, saying he would "chop up" the "poxy" pooch, after Gollop gave his fellow Englishman a new life in Scotland.

Hageman, originally of Reading, could have been jailed for up to 12 months for the offences when he returned to the dock at Ayr Sheriff Court today to be sentenced.

The 46-year-old had been living in Gollop's home in the East Ayrshire village of Muirkirk and doing plastering jobs with him.

But they fell out and Hageman moved out and threatened to kill Gollop and his dog amid the fallout.

And he was placed on a Community Payback Order today/yesterday (MON) after Sheriff Diane Turner was told he had snapped at how he had been treated.

He previously pleaded guilty to sending threatening voice messages, in breach of the Communications Act 2003.

In the messages, Hageman said: "On my mother's soul, I'm gonna finish you, and you f****** know I'm capable.

"You're only mouthy 'cause you're a grass and already run to the police. Well they won't stop me neither, 'cause they dunno what vehicle I'm in and they dunno when I'm coming.

"They won't find me. But I'm gonna get you, Jason, yeah. If I've gotta stab you up in front of them, so be it, but I'm gonna finish you, you f****** little scumbag, dwarf, bent-nosed little c***.

"You ain't gonna be saying that, you little f****** dwarf, when I cut your throat and your dog's throat. Trust me. Watch. You think I'm joking you.

"Jason, you're a f****** nobody. You're a little, dirty, little, fat, grass. Watch what you get, you little c***. 

"Twenty-two years coming. Remember when you grassed me up for that robbery? Watch what you get you dirty, little, snakey c***.

"And your f****** poxy dog? I'm gonna chop it up first, you f****** mug."

Defence solicitor Tony Currie told the court today, Monday March 2, 2026, that the messages had come during a fall out between the former friends and that Gollop had kept Hageman's belongings when he moved out.

He explained: "He let whatever his frustrations were get the better of him. There is clearly a background - this didn't happen in a vacuum.

"He felt this was the straw that broke the camel's back by a man that had invited him to come to the area to make a fresh start."

Sheriff Turner told Hageman she was placing him on a 12-month-long Community Payback Order, which will see him supervised by social workers and engaging with mental health services.

As she did so, she warned him he could still be jailed over the case.

She said: "I will give you the benefit of the doubt in this matter. I do have a concern that there were two sides to this.

"I hope you do engage and take this opportunity. It will be a fresh start. Take the opportunity to deal with the issues that you have.

"Perhaps by the end of it you will be employed and have established a new life and the fresh start that you hoped coming to Scotland would be.

"But be under no illusion - if you don't engage you'll be on a very rapid route into custody."

Hageman ended up in and out of jail after squandering the fortune he won on comedy duo Ant and Dec's ITV show, which was the brainchild of Simon Cowell.

Hageman, now of Cumnock, East Ayrshire, was convicted of domestic abuse and jailed for five years in 2006.

He then appeared on the 2011 episode of Red or Black? after being released from prison.

In 2014 he found himself back behind bars after being convicted of bombarding a woman with 400 threatening text messages in just 48 hours.

And in 2024 he was jailed for 12 weeks for stealing from a nurse while she was working in the intensive care unit of a hospital.

He swiped her handbag from her locker, then used her car keys to steal her vehicle but police foiled the plot and he his associate were both jailed.