The joke isn’t funny any more. When former health secretary Matt Hancock finally entered the I’m a Celebrity jungle yesterday, he and fellow late arrival Seann Walsh were pretty much the only ones laughing. They fell into the forced bonhomie of divorced dads who’d both got the wrong date for a Fathers 4 Justice piss-up but decided to make a night of it anyway. When Hancock sang a snatch of Ed Sheeran you could almost feel the nation’s libido shrivel up and die.
On their arrival in the main camp later Walsh was greeted with indifference, Hancock with stone-cold incredulity. The subsequent conversations and Bush Telegraph monologues, carefully edited for broadcast, suggested most contestants were appalled that a sitting MP was neglecting his constituents. “I can’t help but think he SHOULD BE AT WORK,” hissed Chris Moyles. Charlene White could barely contain her scorn when Hancock suggested he’d volunteered to nosh on kangaroo sphincter as some sort of public service.
