On the slide again... Matt mucks up his jungle debut
AS if things weren’t bad enough back home, Matt Hancock’s reputation took another hit last night as he made his controversial entrance on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
The MP slipped on the bridge on his way into camp, failed to win a decent number of stars for dinner and received a frosty welcome from his campmates.
He was even teased about his press conference catchphrase as health secretary during the pandemic.
Chris Moyles asked: ‘You’ve got to get it out of the way for me – please just say: “Next slide please”, and I’m really happy.’ After he obliged, Boy George implied viewers would not be impressed, adding: ‘You’re really going to get it.’
Hancock, 44, who was stripped of the Tory whip on signing up to the ITV show, had earlier joined the other new arrival, Seann Walsh, in Mole HQ – a separate camp – and serenaded the comedian with a rendition of Perfect by Ed Sheeran, his favourite singer.
The pair then took on the Beastly Burrow Bushtucker Trial in a bid to win 11 stars but managed only six.
The West Suffolk MP screamed as cockroaches, mealworms and slime rained down on the pair as they crawled through the tunnel network in the pitch black.
Hosts Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly were seen laughing as they argued over which way to go.
Hancock and Walsh’s meagre haul of stars failed to impress their campmates. And any chance of Hancock winning them round started to look slim when he was given a grilling over why he was taking part.
Coronation Street actress Sue Cleaver said he was a ‘ brave man’, while presenter Scarlette Douglas queried his reasons for signing up.
Hancock said: ‘ Why? Because, all politicians are known – and me in particular – for being in a very sort of strict way of being. Which is just not actually how we are.’
TV presenter Miss Douglas then asked: ‘ How would you say you were?’ Hancock replied: ‘More human than that.’
Speaking later in the Bush Telegraph, Hancock appeared to have picked up on his campmates’ reactions as he reflected: ‘They weren’t desperately impressed with six stars were they?’ Walsh laughed and replied: ‘They were not!’