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He was the star of Saturday night TV and would turn men who squared up to him into quivering wrecks.

Gladiator Shadow quickly became a favourite for the 15 million enthralled viewers of the weekly ITV show.

So when the channel threw a reunion for the programme last weekend, fans would have expected the 17-stone hulk to be centre stage with his pugil stick.

But the former bodybuilder was ­nowhere to be seen.

In an exclusive Sunday People interview Shadow, whose real name is Jefferson King, says he has been ­virtually erased from the show’s ­history after he was axed for taking drugs.

(Image: Rex)

Today the 54-year-old reveals how his life unravelled in a decade-long drug ­addiction when the Gladiator cameras stopped rolling.

He tells how he:

Went from prime-time TV earning £750 a show to pocketing £3.60 as a gravedigger in West London.

Plummeted by four stone as he whiled away his days smoking crack-cocaine and heroine on friend’s sofas.

Swapped gorging on 10,000 calories a day and being strong enough to lift a Mini Cooper, to scrounging for meals “every two days” and being “as weak as a kitten”.

Spent eight years in and out of prison for drugs ­offences and shoplifting ­after stealing and begging to feed his habit.

Now six years clean of drugs, Jeff said: “I felt like a leper after Gladiators. I was on the ­biggest programme there was – ­bigger than Blind Date and Noel’s House Party. People were rushing home to see Gladiators on a Saturday night.

“Then after I was fired... people saw me differently. It felt like I’d had a life and then all of a sudden I didn’t.

“Even a decade after I left I was ­involved in opening a gym in London and Gladiator Rhino came along. But I heard ­rumours afterwards that London Weekend Television had told him and a few others not to associate with me.

“It’s been ten years since I’ve seen any of them.”

Jeff was axed from the show in 1994 after being accused of taking cocaine in a London nightclub. Programme maker LWT’s official reason was that he had tested positive for steroids.

He claims the shock sacking was the start of the show’s demise.

“It was no coincidence that when I was on the show there were 15 million viewers and after that there were ten million at best, “ he said.

(Image: Rex)

“The bosses used to say no one ­person was bigger than the show but I proved them all wrong.

“I was the ­ultimate challenge. I was going to damage you.

“But the producer called me into his office and said that, as much as he didn’t want to, he had to let me go because I’d been accused of doing cocaine.

“I did lots of drugs in my life. I ­started taking crack at 17 in New York and was hooked for ten years. But during Gladiators I didn’t take Class A’s.

“The only drugs I took were steroids. The show’s bosses wanted superhumans to go up against normal members of the public. Many of us were from the ­bodybuilding world and steroids were part of that world for a lot of people.

“When the viewing figures got big after the first year, bosses were under pressure to prove the show was clean family entertainment.

(Image: Rex)

“I feel I was made a scapegoat and I still think it is unfair that they didn’t give me a second chance.”

Jeff was also overlooked at a mini reunion during an episode of Stephen Mulhern’s The Saturday Night Story last weekend, when ITV bosses didn’t invite him. But he shrugs it off, saying: “I’m not that fussed. I’m used to not getting invited to things now.”

He also feels the show cheated him financially. He claims show bosses were interested only in pocketing the series’ profits for themselves.

“I had a nice lifestyle. I drove a Vauxhall Frontier with a personalised numberplate. I had a nice home. But I was never rich,“ he said.

“The American Gladiators are ­millionaires now because they were given repeat rights. But we didn’t get any of that.

“Even now the original show is on Sky but we still don’t get any money for it. I met a guy who’d made £4.5million in two years from selling Gladiator dolls.

"Mine was one of the most popular. But we didn’t have merchandise rights either.

(Image: Steve Bainbridge)

“I printed 12,000 posters and T-shirts and went to a ­market in Stoke-in-Trent to sell them. In a few hours I’d made £5,500 but was then asked to move on by the police for causing an obstruction.”

Jeff admits to being swept up by his overnight fame and to having an extra-marital affair while his wife, Olivia, was pregnant with twins. She kicked him out despite his protests.

He said: “I had only myself to blame. I was on bended knee, crying, begging. She didn’t forgive me and we eventually ­divorced.”

Within three years he had regressed to his drug ­addiction and was camped on friends’ sofas in London.

He said: “My worst low was a few years after Gladiators. I started doing more and more drugs and had to fund my habit by working as a manual labourer.”

One of his worst jobs during this time was working as a gravedigger in Greenford, West London.

He said: “It was very hard and messy. Once you broke through the topsoil you hit clay and then it was tough.

(Image: Rex)

“For eight hours a day I had to clean weeds and tidy up too. But I gave it up after seven weeks. It was just far too much to bear.” Soon work took a backseat altogether as Jeff began to ramp up the amount of crack-cocaine and heroin he was smoking.

He said: “I had become a full-time crackhead.

“I lived in the darkness and dug holes so deep I could not get out.

“The withdrawals were terrible. I’d be hot and cold, shaking.”

As the drugs robbed him of his energy and motivation, Jeff couldn’t train any more. He said: “I was very skinny and looked terrible. People would come up to me and say, ‘you look a bit like Shadow off Gladiators.’ I was too ashamed to admit I was him.”

To fund his addiction Jeff turned to crime and loans from his family.

He said: “I was a great manipulator of people. I would make up all sorts of excuses to borrow cash from relatives.

(Image: Steve Bainbridge)

“I would steal anything from ­toothpaste to meat. If I stole five packs of beef fillets at £9 a pack I could make more bucks to pay for the drugs.

“I ended up in prison for shoplifting and drugs possession every year for eight years. The first time was after a raid at a friend’s flat when I was caught in possession cocaine.

“At the time of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, I was in custody and remember watching it on the TV.

“The drugs completely controlled me. My mum, my family and everyone ­worried, but I kept going back to them.”

He says “the lights went on his brain” four years ago, and that’s when he ­realised he had to turn his life around.

Jeff enrolled in a drugs course called Intuitive Recovery.

He said: “I stopped doing drugs after prison in 2009 but I didn’t feel properly free of them. The course taught me that I was letting my habit control me but that I had the power to change that.

“It was a few very simple words that just made something in me change. After that I never looked back.

“I started teaching the course and it became my main job after Gladiators.

(Image: Mirrorpix)

“I’ve rebuilt my relationship with Olivia and have been very proud to see my twins grow up.”

Jeff now works out at a gym in North London five-times a week and is a personal trainer. He also works nights restocking ambulances with medical equipment.

But he admits he’d like to relaunch his TV career with a stint in the I’m a Celebrity jungle.

He said: “I used to inspire kids to go out there and get fit. I want that to be my legacy – not the drugs.”

During Stephen Mulhern’s show, former Gladiators presenter Ulrika Jonsson, 48, was reunited with Lightning, Wolf, Jet, Hunter, Ace and Saracen at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, home to the show for its eight years.

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Lightning – whose real name is Kim Betts – is 43 and runs businesses.

Jet, 45, aka Diane Youdale, was forced to retire after a neck injury. She trained in Pilates but is a psychotherapist. Ace, played by Warren Furman, 43, dated Katie Price in the late 90s and after Gladiators ­became an evangelist and now teaches Christianity.

Wolf – Michael Van Wijk – is 63 and runs a chain of gyms in New Zealand.

Saracen, aka Mike Lewis, 53 is a firefighter. Hunter, whose real name is James Crossely, 42, remained active in bodybuilding and works in gyms. across London.

Gladiators was axed in 2000 when viewing figures fell below five million.