Watch out, Miss Moneypenny! It’s Hancock, the wannabe Bond
AT This time of great peril, i know how much my country needs me. Governments could fall, free will is being crushed and amid the carnage stands one man on a mission to save us from ruin. And that’s me: secret Agent Matt hancock, 007.
You think you know me as the ultimate cackhanded politician, a gaffe-prone health secretary, a grey man in a grey suit, forever landing himself in the soup of scandal. ha! You fools.
Think again. Over the past few years, my elaborate cover has hoodwinked everyone. Remember when i pretended to cry on breakfast television the day the first vaccine was administered? ‘We can’t blow it now,’ i said, choking back the onion tears. God, i was good.
When i bungled the Covid figures, when the Nhs Test and Trace app failed, when the pingdemic pinged us into pandemonium, not to mention all those press conferences spent urging people to stay at home to protect the Nhs and save lives while i was having an affair with a work colleague? it wasn’t idiocy, it was strategy.
For now i can reveal that this smokescreen of incompetence was a facade constructed to disguise my real mission and identity.
People! i wasn’t a Cabinet minister with a bungled brief. i was a spy on her Majesty’s secret service, an international man of mystery, a hero not a zero. Today for the first time, my dossier of photographs reveals to the world the extent of my secret life as a James Bond-alike.
The name is Cock, hancock. No, hang on, that doesn’t work. The name is Matt, Door Matt. Wait, i can do better.
The name is secretary, health secretary ... well, it was until i resigned after my affair. The name is Bond, My-Word-is-My Bond. Well, no, it isn’t. Just ask my wife. hang on, call coming through on the Bat Phone. it is Judi Dench as M. ‘Bond, i need you back,’ she tells me. ‘i never left,’ i reply, pulling on my trusty black polo-neck. Once more i am ready to serve — on land and even in the sea.
DANiel Craig is not the only one with a licence to thrill and, like him, i have problems with the ladies. Those secret snaps taken in my office? They look bad. like i am groping my assistant Miss Gina nee Trembler, just like Bond did with Monica Bellucci in spectre. But nothing could be further from the truth!
i accept i breached social-distancing guidance. But listen, this is what happened: i had three minutes to find where enemy agents had hidden a decoding device before the world blew up. it wasn’t in my top drawer. Nothing in my in-tray.
‘is it here?’ i asked Miss Trembler, using my bionic fingertips to ascertain that they had not hidden the decoder in her boobytrapped tights.
hazards of the job? Being grilled on sky News by smersh operative Kay Burley. ‘how long will the ban on casual sex last?’ she asked during the first lockdown, bold as a brass bedpost.
i put on my most concerned face. ‘People need to be careful, Kay,’ i told her. ‘Only sleep with members of your immediate staff.’ Meeting the royals comes with the territory. ‘have you come far?’ Prince Charles asks me, with a wink. For he knows exactly where i’ve come from — safin’s Poison Factory on Tracy island.
After all, i am on her Majesty’s secret service, as he well knows. ‘Thunderbirds are go,’ i whisper, patting his arm so he knows i know he knows.
The Prince of Wales smiles as a security man bundles me into a blacked-out van. it’s just another day in spyland.