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LONDON (AP) — Matt Hancock, the U.K.’s scandal-prone former health secretary, is seeking an unlikely form of redemption Sunday: an attempt to win “I’m a celebrity … get me out of here” — a grueling, often grueling one. A reality show set in the jungles of Australia.
Hancock led Britain’s response to COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, telling people to stay away from others to protect the health service – then he was caught breaking his government’s own rules when video emerged of him kissing and grabbing an aide who was nearby. affair with
He was forced to resign when The Sun newspaper published CCTV images. This time, however, he knows the cameras are on, and he behaves in a way that many would find even more distasteful: eating the raw underparts of camels, cows, and sheep, among other things.
Yet the British public apparently does not agree.
The show sends a group of famous people, often C-list celebrities, into the Australian rainforest, subjects them to trials involving spiders and snakes, and allows the public to vote for them one by one. While many Britons were upset by Hancock’s appearance, blaming him for the apparent failure of the government’s initial response to the pandemic, viewers lived up to expectations by voting Hancock through to Sunday evening’s final.
The former health chief has already seen the back of Culture Club singer Boy George and ex-rugby player Mike Tyndall, whose wife, Zara, is King Charles III’s niece. Tyndall body tackled Hancock in other acts on the show, mocking the former health secretary’s politics.
“He obviously wants to win,” Tyndall said, with Hancock constantly aiming his T-shirt with the poll number on the camera. “Once a politician, always a politician. Always vote for votes.”
Fellow politicians have been less enthusiastic than the show-voting public. When it was announced that Hancock would appear, he was booed by fellow lawmakers, including many in his own party, and suspended as a Conservative member of Parliament.
His success seems to have done nothing to dampen his anger. Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Cabinet minister Mark Harper said: “I don’t think serving members of parliament should be taking part in reality television programmes.
“However good they are at it, I still think they should be doing the job they’re well paid to do — representing their constituents.”
Announcing that he was going to “step up”, Australian comedian Adam Hills, host of the comedy current affairs show “The Last Leg”, traveled to Hancock’s constituency in eastern England last weekend and met with locals to hear their problems.
“I believe I can do a better job in a week than he’s ever done,” Hills said on the show.
Still, a political comeback isn’t out of the question for Hancock. Conservative MP Nadine Dorries was suspended for appearing on the same show in 2012. Nine years later, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed him to his cabinet.
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