Graham Norton ripped Matt Hancock to shreds in the opening of his latest talk show episode.
The host came on stage in the latest instalment of The Graham Norton Show, which was broadcast on Friday (4 November), and immediately started poking fun at the former health secretary’s forthcoming appearance in I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.
“We’ve got a great show for you tonight – I couldn’t be more excited than if I was a maggot about to crawl into Matt Hancock’s ear.,” Norton said.
Showing a photo of the Conservative MP, who has been suspended after signing up to the show, Norton continued: “There he is arriving in Australia – has Hancock forgotten he’s got a job as an MP? I mean, I suppose it’s possible; for months, he had forgotten he was married.”
Norton was referencing the fact that Hancock found himself publicly disgraced after admitting to violating his own social distancing rules when his affair with aide Gina Coladangelo was exposed.
After a photo of the Australian jungle, where I’m a Celebrity is filmed, was shown on screen, Norton quipped: “This here is the endless jungle Matt Hancock will be staying in; dense and incredibly thick... just two of the things producers have called him.”
Alluding to the series’s Bushtucker Trials, which often sees celebrities tasked with eating animal body parts, Norton added: “Personally, I think I speak for the nation when I say, ‘Matt Hancock should be given the sack, and when he’s finished eating that, the testicles and penis.”
Hancock’s forthcoming appearance on the show has been condemned by TV viewers, who called the channel’s deicsion to sign him up ”sickening”, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Elsewhere, animal rights organisation Peta have penned an open letter calling for Ant and Dec to resign from the show over he use of live bugs and dead animals in the show’s trials.
The Independent has contacted ITV for comment. The series starts on Sunday 6 November at 9pm on ITV.
Meanwhile, Have I Got News For You satirist Ian Hislop has been praised for making guest host Gary Neville “squirm” over his “hypocritcal” decision to attend the forthcoming World Cup in Qatar.
