TV favourite Ant McPartlin has lifted the lid on the uncomfortable health scare that left him with a dramatically swollen eye — and, true to form, he’s found humour in the misery.
The presenter, 50, joked that he “needs to cry more” after a blocked tear duct caused his eye to balloon so badly he looked like he’d stepped out of a boxing ring. Ant shared the candid update while recording the latest episode of his Hanging Out with Ant & Dec podcast alongside longtime co-host Declan Donnelly on Thursday.
Ant explained that the condition — which can cause watery eyes, sticky discharge and crusty eyelids — left him sidelined and visibly uncomfortable. Sharing a photo of the swollen eye with Dec and the production team, he admitted it looked like he’d taken a punch to the face.
Laughing through the pain, Ant said:
“You know when you watch Rocky and at the end there’s all the prosthetics and he’s been beaten up with a big black eye? It looks like prosthetics — but it’s a blocked tear duct. Apparently, I need to cry more.”
The presenter went on to reveal he snapped the now-viral selfie while queueing at a local pharmacy to collect prescribed antibiotics — a trip that didn’t go unnoticed.
“You can tell by my expression I’m not in the best of moods because my eye’s bad — and it was my day off. It ruined my day off,” he said.
“When I picked up my antibiotics, the pharmacist asked for a selfie. Of course I said yes — so there’s a pharmacist out there somewhere with a picture of me looking like that.”
Despite treatment, the swelling lingered longer than Ant had hoped. The eye was still noticeably inflamed when he and Dec appeared on The Graham Norton Show on Friday night, filmed in front of a live studio audience.
“It took a while to go down — days,” Ant recalled. “I saw Dec and it was even bigger. We were doing Graham Norton and had to put loads of make-up on it.”
Describing the sensation, he added: “It felt like it was blocked with an orange — that’s how bad it felt. But it is getting better.”
The presenting duo were joined on the sofa by actress Claire Foy, Stranger Things star Joe Keery and rapper Tinie Tempah, with viewers quick to spot efforts to disguise Ant’s swollen eye under heavy make-up.
During the show, Ant and Dec also shared a royal anecdote, revealing they once followed King Charles for a year for a documentary and were invited to stay overnight at Dumfries House ahead of their final interview.
“We were like, ‘Hell yes!’” Ant said. “I tried on the robe in my room and ran into the corridor to find Dec — and there was the Prince. He started talking to me about pruning roses. I was mortified.”
Dec added that the pair later got “a bit noisy” after wine in their room and were politely asked to keep it down.
The pair also spoke about their new unscripted podcast, Hanging Out with Ant & Dec, hosted on their newly launched digital channel Belta Box. The series sees the duo chatting freely with no agenda, reminiscing about their decades-long friendship — to the mild terror of their wives.
“Our wives are more nervous than us,” Dec joked. “They think we might give too much away.”
Belta Box is available across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, featuring new digital formats alongside classic Ant and Dec moments — though fans may be hoping future episodes are filmed with Ant’s tear ducts fully unblocked.
