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.
A clearly upset Boy George expressed the greater shock: that one of the faces of the collective trauma of the pandemic was now clowning for coin and public approval on primetime. We can and probably will endlessly debate the rights and wrongs of the Covid policies the government Hancock was a part of. But to preside over 190,000 deaths, get sacked for a grubby affair that broke your own lockdown rules, then try to turn your midlife crisis into a lucrative entertainment career takes a special kind of gall. Hancock is reportedly getting £350,000 for this show, only “some” of which will be donated to charity. Ha, bloody ha.
He was inserted carefully and slowly into the show, like some sort of invasive probe. He and Walsh – who must be grateful he’s this series’ *second*-most reviled, caught-on-camera love-cheat – initially arrived at a secondary camp, Mole Headquarters. The two will be given secret challenges that will enable them to win treats for their campmates while further alienating them: yesterday Hancock had to steal a hat and a gilet and call Moyles “Greg” three times; Walsh pretended he could identify non-existent birdsong.
Before that they had to undergo the first of many messy humiliations. Their hollow laughter was replaced by the confected hysteria of hosts Ant and Dec as they were dumped into a pitch black burrow to root for star-shaped meal tokens amid torrents of slurry and insects. Walsh achieved the astonishing feat of making Hancock seem capable. He didn’t know what a star felt like. “I’ve got your helmet,” he said, clutching at his partner in infamy. Afterwards they helped each other wash off the filth. This was the shower scene nobody asked for.
I’m hard-pressed to say which was Hancock’s most excruciating line once in camp. Was it the one about Rishi Sunak providing “stability”? His suggestion that “I can use this [show] to peel myself back a bit”? Or that he is here to show that politicians are “human”. As Mike Tindall opined: “Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.”
Naturally, Hancock was the voters’ choice to undergo tonight’s trial, Tentacles of Terror. He’ll be put through all the challenges before he’s voted out. And he’ll come through it with that same facile smirk, to press on with the next attempted reputational resurrection, his lack of shame and self-doubt intact. Not funny. Not funny at all.
I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here is on ITV
