Matt Hancock famously landed himself in hot water last summer when a clinch with his lover Gina Coladangelo was caught on camera in his Whitehall office and cost him his Cabinet career.
But on Tuesday, the former Health Secretary was captured enjoying the more innocent pleasures of an icy plunge into the depths of London’s Serpentine.
The 43-year-old Tory MP had been jogging in a foggy Hyde Park with members of the Parliamentary Running Club, including former Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland and former junior health minister Lord Bethell.
On reaching the Serpentine, where other swimmers had broken a thin layer of ice on the surface, the trio stripped off and took to the murky waters.
Mr Hancock, who has only just emerged from isolation after testing positive for Covid for the second time last week, swam for about 20 metres in water chilled by a frosty winter’s night before deciding that was enough.
This isn’t the first time the former minister has shown off his sporting prowess.
Last year the Standard snapped him leaping over fences and doing press-ups in St James’s Park, while in 2018 he posted a video trying out parkour by jumping off concrete blocks on the Southbank.
