Ant and Dec have spoken out about Matt Hancock’s controversial booking on the most recent series of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!.
Last year, the ITV reality show hit the headlines when it was announced that the former health secretary would be joining the line-up, which was met with widespread backlash at the time.
Since the series came to an end, a number of last year’s campmates have admitted they struggled with sharing a living space with the MP, at least at first.
Others have said they felt like they had to put their own personal feelings aside when dealing with Hancock, which I’m A Celebrity hosts Ant and Dec have said they somewhat relate to.
“I think it’s very difficult not to [feel that way],” Dec told HuffPost UK, in an exclusive interview that will be published in full this weekend.
He continued: “We were all affected by decisions that he made and situations he created, so it was very, very difficult.
“But we tried incredibly hard to be impartial and to put that to one side. And I hope we did it.”
“Everybody comes to Australia with baggage,” Ant says. “It doesn’t matter who you are. Boy George did. Matt Hancock did. Probably all of the campmates [last] year came with a history. But once they’re in there, they’re campmates, so we have to treat them like campmates, and let them tell their stories.
“And obviously we take the piss, mercilessly… but we do that with all of them. And we didn’t want to single him out, either, or give him too much airtime, because that would be unfair to the other campmates. We tried to be as fair, and as even, as possible to all of them.”
Responding to critics who claimed it was inappropriate for Hancock to have signed up for the show at all, Dec stated: “That is a really interesting point of view. And, of course, [it] has some validity.
“I think it was interesting to allow him his say and to hear things from his point of view. Like I say, it was a situation that we all lived through, and he was at the centre of it.
“I kind of wanted to hear – now that he’s no longer a politician, and wasn’t doing his pivots in interviews – his side of the story, and his point of view.
“I personally thought it was a really really interesting booking. And I was interested in hearing what he was like, and what things were like from his point of view.”
After taking part in I’m A Celebrity, Hancock was suspended from the Conservative party, and he’s since said he will not run as an MP in the next election.
More recently, it was revealed that Hancock earned a six-figure sum to appear on I’m A Celebrity, only a portion of which was donated to charity.
Ant and Dec’s interview coincides with the new series of their show Saturday Night Takeaway, which returns to ITV on 25 April.
Read the full interview on HuffPost UK this Saturday.