Matt Hancock says Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins is ‘one of the most difficult things he’s ever done’ ahead of show final
MATT Hancock has told how his Downing Street days prepared him for interrogation on Channel 4 show Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Speaking ahead of the show’s final tonight, the former Health Secretary, 45, said it was an attempt to rile him — but he was trained to remain calm.
MP Matt told us: “I’m in a profession where hostility is baked in. I’ve been interrogated by people in the most aggressive way, by people being totally unreasonable. Have you met Piers Morgan?”
Matt said of his Celeb SAS stint – which saw him forced to strip to his pants in front of a Liz Truss look-a-like: “It was really one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.
“It definitely taught me something about resilience and also about letting things flow over and letting things go.
“I felt like I walked in as a politician and came out as a human. That is really how I felt. It striped everything back.”
Matt’s time on the gritty Channel 4 series has also seen him save a co-star from drowning.
Yet on the flip side, he was subject to a brutal punch in the face and referred to as Matt Handj*b on the show.
Matt resigned as Health Secretary in 2021 after The Sun exposed shock CCTV footage which showed him breaking his own Covid rules in an adulterous clinch with former aide, now girlfriend, Gina Coladangelo.
He quit his Cabinet post in 2021 and is now an independent MP for West Suffolk after the Tories removed the party whip.
He filmed SAS: Who Dares Wins in the jungles of north Vietnam shortly before attempting to win over the public by appearing on I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! last November.
He added to us: “At the end, I felt on the one hand, super fit after an incredibly intense training session.
“On the other hand, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t stand up, so I had a broken rib and trench foot. So we were in a bit of a mess physically.
“Trench foot is an incredibly painful problem, and it is like having blisters everywhere on your feet. And so they were red raw for a long time.”
The Celeb SAS final airs tonight at 9pm (stream or watch live on Channel 4.)