Trouble brews in the jungle after MP’S debut

Television I’m a Celebrity ... ITV1

WELCOME to the jungle, Matt Hancock. It’s a popularity contest fraught with scheming rivals and poisonous snakes, so Westminster

escapees should feel right at home.

The former health secretary’s participation in I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! has hogged headlines since it was confirmed last week. After three nights of his imminent arrival being teased by hosts Ant and Dec, the West Suffolk MP and walking midlife crisis made his eagerly awaited entrance. En route, Hancock slipped on a rope bridge and took a pratfall. He’ll pray it wasn’t a metaphor.

All teeth, neediness and nervous laughter, Hancock and his fellow latecomer, comedian Seann Walsh,

were welcomed with a Bushtucker Trial. “Beastly Burrows” saw them clamber through tunnels while showered in creepy-crawlies. With an undignified yelp, Hancock said he’d been “dumped on”. They earned only six meals out of a possible 11. Blame the cost of living crisis.

The pair entered the main camp as “undercover moles” with secret missions. He and Walsh formed a fast bond – perhaps partly because the Strictly Come Dancing “love rat” was relieved to meet someone more widely reviled than himself. Hancock claims

he’s signed up to communicate with “the masses” and raise awareness of dyslexia. Promoting the imminent publication of his memoir is merely a bonus. Meeting his campmates, Hancock faced a cross-examination by unimpressed newsreader Charlene White. Rugby-playing royal Mike Tindall dismissed his answers as “bulls--t”. Eighties pop diva Boy George confessed that if his hospitalised mother had died on Hancock’s watch, he would have left the jungle in protest.

Will Hancock fare better than MP Nadine Dorries, who was voted off first

in the 2012 series? Let’s hope so. ITV will want value for his £400,000 fee. Besides, it would be a shame to send him back to his five-star Gold Coast hotel too soon. Far more fun to keep him in and let the public torment him as pandemic payback.

Hancock is destined to become a non-stop Bushtucker Triallist. A televised national punchbag. Before the credits rolled, viewers had voted for him to face “The Tentacles of Terror”. This surreal bid for reality TV rehabilitation could prove his worst idea since that metal “Care” badge.