Matt Hancock was “annihilated” by special forces officers on the upcoming series of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, according to co-star Danielle Lloyd.
The West Suffolk MP stars in the show’s biggest line-up with 16 famous faces, including Gareth Gates, Melinda Messenger and James Argent, who are put through their paces in the jungle phase of SAS selection in Thung Ui, north Vietnam.
Last week it was revealed that the former health secretary was put on blast over his handling of the pandemic and now Lloyd, who will also appear on the Channel 4 series, came to his defence, claiming that Hancock handled the intense “confrontation quite well”.
The 39-year-old told OK!: “Some people definitely had a few questions for him over what went down during the pandemic, but I won’t give too much away.
“All I’ll say is that he did handle confrontation quite well. It was such an intense situation, but I think the officers absolutely annihilated him.”
Last week, chief instructor Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham said his Channel 4 co-stars felt they needed to interrogate his political decision-making during that time, as well as his affair with his aide Gina Coladangelo “for the nation”.
Billingham, who didn’t take part in the interrogation, admitted his team “pushed” Hancock “as hard as they could” during his stint on the show but the team did not have “time” to get “everything” they wanted out of him.
The SAS leader shared at the launch event: “We wanted to get to really know who he was going for… and his decision making… and yeah, we pushed as far as we could to get it out of him
“I want to know, we all wanted to know… and yeah, I guess a nation does want to know, so we got as far as we could with him but it was hard work.”
Former United States marine Rudy Reyes admitted he wanted to get know Hancock as “nobody likes him”.
He said: “I just wanted to take him as a recruit, and let his actions and how he shows up for each task and how he conducts himself, that would dictate the way that I would treat (him) but we did notice quite quickly, he can’t take criticism and we don’t like that.
“There’s no time to bark orders… we’ve got a training schedule, we’ve got things to do and that will get (us) thrown off course and be horrible so that’s why it comes across that way.”
Hancock, who has said he will stand down at the next general election, earned £45,000 for taking part in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Already his stint is making headlines, after it was revealed that he and fellow cast mate Jermaine Pennant were ordered by their SAS instructors to fight.
