Until yesterday, I had been really looking forward to the return of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!
I was especially looking forward to seeing how my pal, the brilliant ITN newsreader Charlene White, would fare in the Australian jungle.
But now three weeks of what’s usually the best reality show on the telly has been ruined by the arrival of Matt Hancock, a man described as “a total prat” by some of his own colleagues.
Last year, producers and the show’s inimitable presenters Ant and Dec got it spot-on when, at the height of the Mirror’s revelations that No10 had been at the centre of repeated Covid rule-breaking parties, they started an episode with a skit that showed just how much the story had cut through and disgusted ordinary Britons.
Now the idea of the former health secretary being voted to eat kangaroo testicles and being buried with rats may sound amusing, but this time the joke has gone too far.
I know one person who won’t be laughing and that’s Charlene whose late great-aunt Dell died of Covid during the pandemic. It was heartbreaking to watch Charlene, also a panellist on ITV’s Loose Women, break down in tears as she spoke so movingly about the small, socially distanced funeral her family had to hold for Dell as they, like millions of us across the country, stuck to the rules.
Meanwhile Hancock and his pals were busy breaking the very rules they created and demanded the rest of us abide by. It was basically one rule for them and one rule for us.
When he was health secretary, Hancock, who looked like the cat who got the cream when he arrived in Brisbane on Tuesday, presided over one of the worst Covid death rates in Europe.
But rather than show any sign of remorse, the deluded former minister has swanned off to Oz where he’ll pick up a reported £350,000 cheque for trying to be a pound-shop Lembit Opik. He’s now been suspended from the Tory party, but what does he care when he’s raking in the equivalent of four-year’s wages in less than a month?
You couldn’t make this up.
He’s the bookies’ favourite to be voted to take on the most bushtucker trials and challenges in the show’s history. But that will soon get boring.
So if we really want Matt to get the message about what we think of him, let’s do the one thing politicians hate. Simply ignore him and don’t vote for him at all.
