In July 1970, Lake was involved in a pub brawl for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison later that year (his friend, the musician Leapy Lee, was sentenced to three years for stabbing the pub's relief manager), although he was released after serving a year. Lake was a keen horseman and on his release from prison, Dors presented him with a mare named Sapphire. While riding the horse in 1972, he was unseated when the horse ran into the bough of a tree, and broke his back, and for a time it was thought he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair; in fact, he recovered and was walking again within three weeks. After leaving hospital, unable to work while he recovered, and in severe pain, he began drinking heavily. Dors said of him at this time: "alcohol had unleashed a Monster, uncontrollable and frightening".