Matt Hancock: It’s great to be here, he said in his minister-visits-sewage-farm voice

Matt Hancock, who made his reality TV debut last night on I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, crawled through muck in his first challenge

JAMES GOURLEY/ITV/SHUTTERSTOCK

They say prison food seldom fazes inmates with a public school background because they learn young to cope with the filthiest nosebag. Same, perhaps, with politicians and jungle ordeals. For his first bushtucker trial on I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! the former health secretary Matt Hancock had to crawl half-blinded through a tunnel of mud, dirtying his hands in a quest for token treasure.

Creepy-crawlies, squeaking rodents and small scorpions abounded. Buckets of disreputable effluent kept being emptied over his head. Through all this and various other japes and low-grade intrigue, Hancock was a good sport and kept smiling.

As a metaphor for Westminster, it was pretty unarguable.

“It’s great to be here,” he said in his best