British politician Matt Hancock has become the most famous of his guild in recent days for joining the participants of a television show, in which the audience votes to assign them lurid tasks in an Australian jungle. Ten million Britons watched the show on Thursday night, two million more than last year’s average.
Hancock’s arrival on the stage designed by the producers caused unanimity among the other eleven participants: “What is he doing here?” They wondered. In Parliament, which continues to work and pay his salary, and among the apparent majority of UK residents, the common question is ‘What is he doing there?’ The former Minister of Health has tried to explain it.
When it became known that he was going to the reality show, he pointed out that his desire is to promote the recognition of dyslexia, a neurological disorder that makes reading, writing and comprehension difficult. Hancock, a brilliant student, was diagnosed as dyslexic at Oxford University. He has introduced a bill in Parliament for schools to test their students and train teachers.
But, when one of the participants in the program, the journalist and television presenter, Charlene White, asked him what he was doing there, the former minister digressed. «Politicians are seen as people with a very strict way of being, but I am more human. It is a way of showing that we are human beings. And besides, I have a taste for adventure. He will charge about 450,000 euros for his participation.
Former international rugby player Mike Tindall, married to Zara Phillips, niece of King Charles III, did not believe him. “Caca de vaca”, he said to a group of participants who chatted about his words. In another dialogue, Hancock stated that ‘reality’ is “a powerful instrument” that can help him connect with “the new generations.”
John Crace writes in ‘The Guardian’ that “the last place a sane person expects to be real is a ‘reality show'”. Camilla Long, in ‘The Times’, wonders “why she needs a ‘powerful instrument’ to get her message across.” And she sentences: “What we need is politicians who send fewer messages. We don’t ignore who they really are, especially in Matt’s case.”
Matt Hancock is not popular. He notified his wife and his three children of the separation the night he learned that ‘The Sun’ was going to publish a photo of him and his lover holding hands in the office of the Minister of Health. He had to resign for breaking the rules of distancing with people from other homes, at the end of his controversial management of the pandemic.
jungle adventure
Biochemist and business executive Kate Bingham, who successfully led the team that achieved the world’s first Covid vaccinations for free, describes Hancock, in her book about the time, as a character ‘Dr . Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. She expresses fury at her because, after counseling her before the meeting, she accused her of incompetence before Boris Johnson’s Cabinet. Maybe because she wanted to be head of Bingham’s team.
Neil Postman’s most famous book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, predicted in 1985 a gradual conversion of politics into entertainment, into ‘show-business’, due to the television representation of ideas through images. Hancock’s adventure in the jungle is criticized by his colleagues, who perhaps also live trapped in a policy that demands continuous ‘performance’ from them.
Hancock is not the only British politician who has participated in television shows. Former Liberal Democrat Minister Vince Cable did it in a popular dance competition. Boris Johnson’s fame on a comedy show was essential to his political career. Former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow is famous for his theatrical yelling at him during the Brexit debates.
His replacement, Lindsay Hoyle, will not go the way of Hancock. “I am a member of Parliament. Am I going to run around a jungle eating kangaroo testicles? Absolutely not”. Hoyle leaves it up to the voters to dispense justice, but the Conservative Party, which quickly promoted him to government as a young reformer, has expelled him from the parliamentary group at 44.
The adventurer will be independent until the next election, and his former colleagues can already punish him. Chris Heyton-Harris, minister for Northern Ireland, a heavily loaded post, has explained that he and his colleagues are using the show’s phone ‘app’ vote to get him subjected to the worst drinks in the big show of the sadism.
On Friday night, Hancock ate camel penis, sheep vagina and cow anus. Asked by other contestants the circumstances of his divorce, he expressed another ambition, that of being forgiven. In his constituency paper, the ‘Suffolk News’, a reader writes: ‘He is getting what he wants. He is on all screens, grabbing attention ».
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