During the eighties Ashton co-hosted a TV show with Rick Wakeman called "GasTank". The show was aired every two weeks and, on each episode, there were guests ranging from Phil Lynott to Ian Paice who sat in with the show's in-house band led by Ashton and Wakeman (others were Tony Fernandez and Chas Cronk). In between performances, the guests were interviewed by Wakeman. In 1984, Ashton was given a very small budget to record an album for EMI in Switzerland. The result was the album "Live in the Studio", recorded in less than three days. After that, Ashton went through some hard times due to ill health and lack of work. Although he continued to perform sporadically, he did not release anything until 1988 with a single called "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning". In 1986 he married Sandra Naidoo and adopted her daughter Indira.