'Even my wife started doubting me': Frankie Dettori tells Piers Morgan how his partner of 27 years gave him a brutal ultimatum after he was banned from racing for taking cocaine and couldn't pay his family bills

Frankie Dettori has told how his partner of 27 years slammed him with home truths during his ban from horse racing for taking cocaine.

The champion jockey said his wife Catherine cut him to the quick when he was shunned even after his six-month punishment had ended.

Dettori, 53, said today his family had struggled to pay the bills during the ban, a problem which continued for a year and a half afterwards.

He was banned from horse racing after cocaine was detected in his system at Longchamp racecourse, in Paris, on September 16, 2012.

He disclosed that he took his children out of school for six months while he served his punishment and they all took holidays around the world.

But his expected immediate return to the limelight in 2013 never happened and it would be months before he was welcomed back into the racing fold properly.

He told Piers Morgan Uncensored: ‘Nobody would touch me. Worst thing was even my wife started doubting me you know.

Frankie Dettori and his wife Catherine at the I’m A Celebrity show last year at the hotel in Queensland

Frankie Dettori and Catherine Dettori at the Frankie Dettori Celebration Dinner at JW Marriott Grosvenor House last year

‘She said to me the famous words “show me how good you are”.

‘We were struggling to pay bills and things were going bad and it all ended up in an argument.

‘She turned round and said you know all your life you’re telling me how good you are, look at us now, we can’t even pay bills, so show me how good you are

‘That was like someone shot me in the heart. ‘

The drugs shame was a huge blow to the household name sportsman who shot into the public imagination in 1996 with a ‘Magnificent Seven’ wins at Ascot.

He was awarded the MBE in 2000 and in 2002 became a team captain on the BBC show A Question of Sport, but quit the following year when he was apparently stung by a question from a participant as to when he had retired from riding.

The champion jockey said his wife Catherine cut him to the quick when he was shunned even after his six-month punishment had ended

Frankie Dettori celebrates after winning the Qipco Champion Stakes and the final ride of his career in Britain on King Of Steel during the QIPCO British Champions Day at Ascot Racecourse, Berkshire

Earlier in his career, in 1993, Dettori was given a police caution after being caught with a small amount of cocaine in his pocket in London.

In his autobiography he admitted that he become a ‘tearaway, a night-club wolf, a drugs dabbler who was perilously close to seeing his career go permanently off the rails’.

In a BBC Newsnight programme he also admitted taking diuretics, chocolate laxatives and even Lasix, to keep his weight down, before the Jockey Club outlawed them in 1998.

He starred on I’m A Celebrity last year but became the first campmate to leave after receiving the least amount of viewers.

After his name was then announced the jockey cheered and appeared delighted to be heading home to the lap of luxury, two weeks after entering camp as a late addition.

Dettori first spoke of his shame over his drug taking over ten years ago.

He told how he took the cocaine in a ‘moment of weakness’.

Speaking in May 2013 he said: ‘I’m very ashamed and embarrassed, and paid a very big price for it.

‘I spent six months not doing the thing that I love, racing. The embarrassment of telling the children. You know they still go to school, they might get bullied and so it was a very, very difficult time.’

Dettori, whose spell out of racing included a stint on Celebrity Big Brother, claims that the he turned to drugs when at a low point in his career, with his 18-year association with Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin operation about to end.

His positive test came at Longchamp in France only 24 hours after he had seen Godolphin’s Encke win the St Leger.