‘Matt Hancock unleashed.” It’s a potent image and one, I suspect, we all could have done without. But the Daily Mail has papers to sell and this was how it chose to promote its serialisation of the genital-munching, scorpion-dodging, forgiveness-seeking former health secretary’s much-hyped Pandemic Diaries. Explosive, jaw-dropping, electrifying. That was the Mail’s verdict. But for this NHS palliative care doctor (biased, you could say, by my own pandemic spent caring for the dying on Covid wards), attempting to digest Hancock’s 592-page tome was an altogether more emetic experience.
They may lack the visceral repulsiveness – and frank insensitivity — of those televised bushtucker trials, but Hancock’s written efforts at exculpation share much in common with his recent flirtation with reality TV. Both are a weird hybrid of openness and artifice, of artfulness dressed up as candour. You’ll recall Hancock billing his I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! jaunt as an act of public service. “It’s as clear as day that politicians like me must go to where the people are – particularly those who are politically disengaged. We must wake up and embrace popular culture,” he told the Sun.
