IN October 2008, Jonathan Ross was public enemy number one.

The TV and radio presenter, who has a holiday home in Langton Matravers, Purbeck, was under fire alongside comedian Russell Brand following the “Sachs-gate” scandal.

The pair sparked a record number of complaints after a BBC Radio 2 broadcast of a series of voice messages for actor Andrew Sachs, making lewd comments about his granddaughter Georgina Baillie, who Brand claimed to have slept with.

Ross was suspended from his positions at the BBC, while both the BBC and Ofcom launched investigations.

Brand and Lesley Douglas, controller of Radio 2, resigned, and Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks. The BBC was fined £150,000 by Ofcom.

Yet three years later, the incident is a distant memory, and, far from having his career in tatters, Ross’s star continues to rise.

The presenter, who regularly attends Swanage Carnival where he enters his dog in the dog show, announced in January 2010 that he would not be renewing his BBC contract after 13 years.

His last show for the channel aired in July and Ross then switched to rivals ITV, where the first in the latest series of his chat show pulled in a respectable 4.3million viewers last month.

He is now back on the BBC hosting BBC4’s World Cinema Awards next month.

So are we becoming a nation of forgivers and forgetters? Or is it just that, actually, we quite like Jonathan Ross and are happy to overlook his mistakes as long as we can still enjoy him on TV?

Ross is not the only celebrity to have endured what at first appears to be a major career blip, only to find that the incident actually works out in their favour.

Supermodel Kate Moss hit the headlines in September 2005 when she was pictured snorting white powder presumed to be cocaine.

Days later she was dropped by fashion retailer H&M. Chanel announced it would not be renewing its contract with her, along with Burberry.

Moss quickly issued an apology, although she did not categorically say she had taken drugs.

Yet fast-forward as little as a few months, and it seems the scandal is all but forgotten.

Moss bagged 18 top modelling contracts for the Autumn/Winter 2006 season including Rimmel, Agent Provocateur, Virgin Mobile, Calvin Klein Jeans and Burberry.

She appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair’s September issue and in 2007, earning an estimated total of $9million in 12 months, with Forbes magazine naming Moss as second on the list of the world’s 15 top-earning models.

In November 2006 she won the Model of the Year prize at the British Fashion Awards and in May 2007 a collection of clothes designed by Moss exclusively for Topshop was launched across the UK in the chain’s 225 stores, with the model reportedly receiving £3million for her work.

She has released four fragrances in collaboration with Coty, as well as designing a range of handbags for luxury goods house Longchamp last year.

Not quite in the same league, but still managing to maintain her career in the public eye is car-crash telly queen Kerry Katona.

She was once the nation’s sweetheart, winning the reality show I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, in 2004, but her life soon imploded.

Katona split with her husband, former Westlife member Brian McFadden, following reports he had been intimate with a lapdancer on his stag do.

After a string of failed romances, she married Mark Croft in February 2007.

But the happiness was short-lived – two years later, Katona was dropped as the face of Iceland after being pictured snorting cocaine at home.

There was also THAT This Morning interview, where she slurred her way through a chat with Philip Schofield, and her accusations that Croft had stolen money from her.

The pair eventually split in 2009, when Katona got her act together, signed with a new manager and filmed another reality show.

She also appeared on Dancing on Ice and most recently came second in Celebrity Big Brother, despite parting company with the manager credited with turning her life around, proving once again that she has won the hearts of the nation.