Ugo Monye has been hit by a bankruptcy petition by HM Revenue & Customs a year after the BBC axed A Question of Sport.

The former England and British & Irish Lions wing, who currently works as a pundit for TNT Sports and presents BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly podcast, is facing financial ruin after HMRC obtained a winding-up order against his “physical well-being” company Show Me The Monye Limited.

A bankruptcy petition against ‘Ugochukwu Monye’ was lodged with the High Court on December 4, following the liquidation of Monye’s company over the reported non-payment of nearly £200,000 in tax and National Insurance payments.

The company’s last set of accounts, for the year ended June 30, 2022, showed it owed £108,562 in corporation tax and £72,967 in other tax and National Insurance.

HMRC lodged a winding-up petition on August 1, 2023, with the winding-up order issued on December 6 of that year by Chief Insolvency And Companies Court Judge Briggs.

That was followed a week later by the news A Question of Sport, the world’s longest-running television sports quiz, had been dropped by the BBC two years into a controversial revamp featuring Monye and Sam Quek as captains and Paddy McGuinness as host.

Monye, who has been approached for comment, is the latest former England star to face bankruptcy after World Cup winners Lawrence Dallaglio and Phil Vickery endured a similar fate.

Dallaglio avoided going bust in 2023, although a report into his own liquidated company, Lawrence Dallaglio Limited, for the year ending October 2024 stated he was still being chased for hundreds of thousands of pounds loaned to the firm.

Vickery’s request to be made bankrupt was granted in February last year after he reportedly racked up debts to HMRC and others totalling six figures.

Monye retired from playing aged 31 in 2015 after spending his entire 13-year career with Harlequins. In that time he helped them to their first Premiership title in 2012, while he also won 14 caps for England and two for the Lions, finishing top try-scorer on the latter’s 2009 tour to South Africa.

Shortly before retirement, he joined what was then BT Sport as a rugby analyst. In 2021, he took part in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing a week after it emerged he had split from his wife of five years.

He told The Sun at the time: “We weren’t in a volatile relationship, we never hated each other and there was no third party. Forget the Strictly curse – it’s the Covid curse!”

A week after Strictly began, Monye was named one of the new captains on A Question of Sport following the BBC’s controversial dumping of veteran trio Sue Barker, Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell. A disappointed Barker, 67, later questioned whether her age had played a part in the decision.

The two-year tenure of McGuinness, Monye and Quek saw ratings plunge from a high of four million in the final years of Barker’s reign to less than a million.

Monye, who earlier that year joined the Princess of Wales for a rugby skills session after becoming a ‘champion’ in her childhood campaign, Shaping Up, also hit the headlines that November amid allegations he had been racially abused while working for TNT Sports at an Exeter Chiefs match.

In August last year, Angus Beukes, 32, appeared at Exeter Magistrates’ Court via a video link to deny a charge of causing racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.

Beukes, who gave an address in Cape Town, South Africa, is due to stand trial on March 7.