Podcaster Steven Bartlett didn’t hold back when grilling former Health Secretary Matt Hancock about his love life in a conversation that left the ex-MP feeling rather uncomfortable
Matt Hancock’s political career was left in tatters when he became embroiled in a major public scandal over his affair with aide, Gina Coladangelo. The shock relationship became public knowledge in 2021, when CCTV of the pair kissing in his ministerial office emerged.
Both married, Hancock and Coladangelo left their respective spouses and are still together now, but the images that showed them breaking social distancing guidelines as the pandemic surged did irrevocable damage to Hancock’s political legacy.
Unsurprisingly, the affair enraged the public, with people up and down the country who were following the social distancing restrictions, robbed of saying goodbye to their loved ones, or attending funerals.
Coladangelo quickly split from husband Oliver Tress, the founder of brand Oliver Bonas, after her romance with the former minister was made public, but she and Matt remain together: living in London, shmoozing at high-end events, and going on lavish holidays.
READ MORE: Top Tory insists Boris Johnson can come back despite damning Covid findingsREAD MORE: Leaked Matt Hancock messages show furious reaction to secret affair and CCTV snog
The former Health Secretary has attempted to rebrand since leaving Westminster, by appearing on reality TV shows I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here in 2022, and Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins the following year.
His bid to move on from the scandal even saw him appear on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of A CEO podcast – where the chat didn’t seem to run as smoothly as he’d anticipated.
The host didn’t hold back when it came to pointing out the hypocrisy of Hancock’s actions amid his steamy affair.
“September 2020, there was guidance put in place to stop us engaging in casual sex outside of our household etc etc,” the podcast host started to say. But Hancock quickly began to seem defensive, shaking his head in response.
“Do you think you can ask the question in a little bit of a more respectful way?” he interrupted, but Steven continued his line of questioning. “You warned against casual sex, advising the public to stick to well-established relationships and joking, ‘I know I’m in an established relationship,'” the host said.
“And you told us to remember the basics of ‘hands face space’ and about hugging, and that you were looking forward to hugging your mum on the 17th May. And then all this stuff comes out about The Sun and the CCTV leak in between,” Steven added about the advice the former health secretary had given the public as the COVID-19 pandemic had quickly taken hold of the UK.
Visibly frustrated, Hancock requested that they “start the segment again” because he didn’t appreciate the framing of Steven’s question. “I haven’t had casual sex with anybody, I fell in love with somebody,” Hancock said, adding as the podcast host continued, “this bit is really hard for me”.
However, Steven stuck to his line of questioning, despite Hancock’s discomfort: “The point that’s been levelled at you is very simple, there’s a contradiction in what you said and how you behaved.”
“That is my response. I resigned because I broke the social distancing guidelines,” the politician finally admitted. “By then, they weren’t actually rules they weren’t the law, but that’s not the point. The point is, they were the guidelines that I’d been proposing.”
Defending his relationship with Gina, he continued, “And that happened because I fell in love with somebody. And I’d known Gina for more than half of my life. We first actually worked together on student radio back in the Oxford days.”
The former health secretary continued, “That’s something that was completely outside of my control and, of course, I regret the pain that that’s caused and the very, very, very public nature.
“Anyone who’s been through this knows how difficult it is, how painful it is, doing that in public is incredibly painful. But I fell in love with someone”.
Hancock also revealed during the podcast that he was at the time still working to “mend” relations with his ex-wife, Martha Hoyer Millar, to whom he was married for 15 years.
The former MP is in the news again following a damning 800-page report from the Covid inquiry. Published this week, the inquiry’s findings slate former PM Boris Johnson and his cabinet for their handling of the pandemic, dubbing their approach “too little, too late” and costing 23,000 people their lives in the first wave.
From the earliest days of the public health crisis, the report finds, there were major concerns about Hancock’s reliability inside the government.
The ex Health Secretary, 47, was also criticised for “untrustworthiness” and “overpromising and underdelivering.”
Since then, he hasstepped back into his family’s firm, BBS, a marketing and data management company, where he is reported to have begun his career – now working as Managing Director.
Despite the damning verdict reached by the inquiry on his failure to manage the pandemic, his net worth is now reported to be a whopping £5 million.