If a week is a long time in politics, a few days in the I’m A Celebrity jungle is almost a lifetime.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock joined the camp in Australia less than seven days ago as the most controversial and disliked contestant in the show’s 22-season history, but after gamely eating a camel’s penis, a sheep’s vagina and a fish eye – and facing up to a coffin full of snakes – he’s now placed as third favourite to win by several bookies.
Before the MP – still serving the constituents of West Suffolk – joined the I’m A Celebritycamp as a late arrival, his decision to appear on reality TV after breaking the government’s own lockdown rules was heavily condemned by campaigners and members of the public who lost loved ones during the pandemic, and he was effectively booted out of the Conservatives to serve as an independent until he is reinstated.
The welcome from some of his campmates was also unsurprisingly frosty.
Singer Boy George explained he would feel guilty “sitting here like I’m having fun with him” as he wasn’t allowed to see his mother in hospital during the pandemic, even when he “thought she was going to die”; radio presenter Chris Moyles questioned why Mr Hancock wasn’t at work; and comedian Babatunde Aleshe said it was “hard” to push views aside “because of the many people whose lives have been affected”.
In what came as no surprise to anyone, Mr Hancock, 44, was voted by the public to carry out every single disgusting, terrifying bushtucker trial from the moment he entered the camp.
From the stomach-churning eating task to the “tentacles of terror” and “house of horrors”, he has faced all the nasties Ant and Dec have thrown at him with a robotic, non-fussy functionality that has seen him win plenty of stars to keep his campmates fed.
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After years of knowing how to avoid political questions he didn’t like – a tactic he fully admitted to his campmates and described as the “pivot” – it seems he has deployed the same keep-calm-and-ignore-your-way-through-it-until-it’s-over mentality in the jungle.
And then, in Monday night’s episode, for the first time since he entered the camp, viewers have let him off the next one. Despite three campmates being needed for the “angel of agony”, Mr Hancock will not be one of them; it seems the public’s desire to see terrified campmates screaming their way through critter-filled tunnels and winning no stars is starting to trump any contempt for, or thirst to humiliate, a politician who broke the rules.
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Bookies including William Hill and Betfair have slashed the odds on the MP winning the show, with Betfair saying he is now 6/1 third favourite after Lioness Jill Scott and rugby star Mike Tindall, and William Hill giving him 5/1 odds and the same top-three running order.
Most of his campmates are also thawing. Despite a simmering tension with Boy George, there have been no full-on rows… yet. In Monday night’s episode, Moyles said he had managed to separate Matt Hancock the politician from Matt, his jungle campmate.
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Matt Hancock: ‘I messed up’
“This is how I look at it,” Moyles said. “There is Matt Hancock… And in camp there is our campmate, Matt, who is, God love him, doing every single trial, every day, and bringing back stars so we can eat.” Then, giving a slight grimace to show reluctance, but almost affectionately, he added: “I may have voiced my opinion about Matt Hancock before, but in here, the star-winning Matt, he’s doing all right.”
I’m A Celeb voting entails viewers getting in touch to keep in their favourite (or most entertaining or controversial) campmate, rather than voting out their least favourite, which usually means the quieter contestants who have had less screen time leave first – so it stands to reason that Mr Hancock will probably remain on the show for a decent period, if not until the final episode.
As health secretary, Mr Hancock was up there helping to make a lot of the government’s decisions during the pandemic and he broke coronavirus social distancing rules by having an affair in his ministerial office with an aide, Gina Coladangelo – caught on camera “grabbing booty, bruv”, as Aleshe put it.
Questioned by his campmates, he has apologised and admitted he made mistakes, told them he is hoping for the public to see the “real” him and is searching for “forgiveness”.
Ms Coladangelo, who is now his girlfriend, could well be waiting for him at the end of the rickety wooden bridge all I’m A Celeb stars traverse when they leave the show, the photographers waiting with even more purpose than usual to get the shot of their kiss.
But could that photograph really be of Matt Hancock, King of the Jungle? Or will it be Matt Hancock, the former health secretary who broke the rules and really should have resisted the pull of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!?
The show is expected to come to an end around 27 November, three weeks since the first campmates entered the jungle – a very long time in politics, and an even longer time in reality TV.
Hollywood celebrities are among thousands of people to have been evacuated from their homes as fires rip through areas of Los Angeles.
Sky News’ US correspondent Martha Kelner reported that Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Reese Witherspoon were all evacuated on Tuesday as wildfires continued to spread in the Pacific Palisades suburb of LA.
The area, which is home to billionaires as well as Hollywood A-listers, is located between Santa Monica and Malibu.
Other celebrities who have fled their homes include the award-winning actor James Woods, who said last night he had been safely evacuated from his home in Pacific Palisades.
But he added in a post on X: “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”
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Actor Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, also posted on social media last night saying he evacuated his home in Malibu and his family were “fleeing for our lives”.
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This Is Us actress Mandy Moore was also forced to leave her home due to the fires.
She said in two Instagram stories she had fled the Eaton fire, which is raging near Altadena, with her children, cats and dog. They have found temporary refuge with friends.
The actress said: “Trying to shield the kids from the immense sadness and worry I feel.
“Praying for everyone in our beautiful city. So gutted for the destruction and loss. Don’t know if our place made it.”
According to Velvet Ropes, which maps celebrity properties, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Matt Damon, Steven Spielberg, Hilary Swank and Sally Field all have homes close to where fires are raging.
Dr Dre, Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, Tyra Banks, Martin Short, Anna Faris, Milo Ventimiglia, Linda Cardellini, Mary McDonnell, Adam Sandler, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Love Hewitt are also said to have houses in affected areas.
In neighbouring Malibu, which was also affected by fires in December, stars including Beyonce and Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish are said to be among the celebrity residents.
The Palisades blaze has already burnt through more than 11,000 acres of land while the Eaton one has caused the death of two people, Los Angeles County fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday.
The two other fires are known as Woodley and Hurst, after the main areas affected.
All four blazes are still growing, Mr Marrone said.
A reality TV personality known for appearing on shows like The Hills and Made In Chelsea has told Sky News her family have lost their homes in the California wildfires.
Stephanie Pratt, a model and the sister of fellow reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt, lives in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, where more than 30,000 people have fled their homes due to the fast-moving blaze.
Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday that the Palisades fire is still growing and that “well over 5,000 acres” have been burnt.
At least two people have been killed so far, with around 1,000 buildings destroyed.
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House surrounded by flames during wildfire
California governor Gavin Newsom earlier declared a state of emergency over the four wildfires in the south of the state.
Speaking to Sky News from London, an emotional Ms Pratt said: “It’s just so crazy, I had no idea what was happening.
“I talked to my dad yesterday and he said ‘The Palisades is burning’. He said that he was at my brother’s house on Chautauqua [Boulevard] and they were just watching the flames come.
“The firefighters came and said you got to leave.”
‘I don’t know if my house is there’
Ms Pratt said her parents and brother Spencer, who like her starred in the reality series The Hills, were safely evacuated from the area.
However, the 38-year-old added that “all of the phones are disconnected” and that she doesn’t know what had happened to her home.
“I talked to my neighbour last night and she told me that [Palisades Charter High School] had burnt down, and that’s directly behind me, and so had Gelson’s Supermarket which is adjacent,” she said.
“I just can’t reach anyone to see if my house is okay. I just Googled it and it said that it’s destroyed and terrible… I don’t know if my house is there.”
When she asked her dad about Spencer, 41, who is married to 38-year-old Heidi Montag – another co-star of The Hills – Ms Pratt said he told her “I’ve never seen him like this”.
“I’m assuming he’s just completely catatonic,” she added. “We don’t care about the material things or anything like that, but this was their family home.
“This is where they raised their two little kids.”
The Palisades fire is one of five blazes currently burning in southern California– evacuation orders were in place on Tuesday in Altadena after another fire, called the Eaton fire, started near a nature preserve.
A third blaze, called the Hurst fire, also ripped through Sylmar in the north of the city.
And according to the state department Cal Fire, two more blazes – the Woodley fire in Los Angeles and Tyler fire in Riverside – broke out on Wednesday.
Two School Of Rock co-stars, who met at the age of 10, have got married.
Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli, who played Marta and Frankie respectively in the 2003 classic alongside Jack Black, tied the knot in New York on Saturday.
The couple brought some of the original cast of the film, which centres on a pretend substitute teacher turning a group of musically gifted school children into a rock band, together to celebrate their nuptials.
Posting on Instagram, Hale, 33, shared various images of the day, including a photobooth picture with a handful of their former cast mates.
The former actress, who now works as a sonographer, wrote under the post: “Special thank you to everyone who contributed to an unforgettable day!”
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Rivkah Reyes, who played bass player Katie in the film, also posted about the wedding, sharing a video on TikTok.
The clip, set to Stevie Nicks’s Edge Of Seventeen, included cameos from Brian Falduto, who played Billy, Joey Gaydos Jr, who played Zack, and Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia, among others.
The use of the song was a nod to one of the scenes from the film where Black and Joan Cusack, who plays headteacher Rosalie Mullins, sing the song in a bar.
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“Celebrating the marriage of Caitlin & Angelo with my forever fam #schoolofrock #wedding,” Reyes wrote alongside the video, which showed them all dancing together.
After appearing together in the film the only contact Hale and Massagli had was through a WhatsApp chat set up with the entire cast, according to The New York Times.
The pair then both left show business and coincidentally reconnected while studying in schools in Florida.
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Massagli, 32, who now works as a lawyer for TikTok, according to The Times, told the paper the familiarity they both had due to working together when they were younger “cut through some of those early relationship hurdles”.