Jermaine Pennant shouted 'yes!' with joy when told he could punch Matt Hancock

21 September 2023 , 23:01

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Matt Hancock and Jermain Pennant (Image: Pete Dadds/ Channel 4)

Former footballer Jermaine Pennant admitted he enjoyed being given permission to rain blows on Matt Hancock during a fight challenge in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.

Pennant said he felt the weight of the nation’s expectations on him as he got his gloves on for the milling task. He said: “My first thought when Rudy shouted number five out was ‘yes!’ Then after that it was, ‘Do not lose’. If it’s rubbish, it doesn’t matter about the fight, but it was imperative that I won! I don’t think I’d have been able to walk the streets again if I didn’t.”

Hancock tells the cameras before the fight: “I’ve had endless death threats over the vaccine, but I haven’t been punched since I was a teenager. I’ve got no idea how I’ll respond.” Ex-winger Jermaine, 40, said that during filming there was a conversation with Hancock about how he could take time away from his paid job as an MP for a reality show.

Hancock and Pennant grapple with each other (Pete Dadds/Channel 4)

“He said he had people who could do that job while he was away,” Pennant recalls. The footballer admitted that he went in with a poor opinion of Hancock, which didn’t change. He added: “I think you all have an opinion about him, but then once you go in there, you leave it where it is, and then as soon as you come out your opinion goes back to where it was.”

It also emerged that Hancock was brought down to earth on the show after ­bragging that being in politics has prepared him for the rigours of crack military training. The cocky former Health Secretary reckoned his cushy life in Westminster stood him in good stead because of the hostile nature in the corridors of power.

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But his attitude does not endear him to the instructors, as Jason Fox brands him “Hancock with a silent Han.” In the first episode of the show, the MP says: “I’m quite used to being in a hostile environment. Politics by its very nature has hostility built into it. One of the things about having been Health Secretary in the pandemic is almost everybody has a personal view on you.

"Who knows what the DS [show’s directing staff] will think?” It is not long before he finds out. Fox tells other instructors: “I get the impression he’s got a bit of an attitude and he thinks he’s above everyone.” Mr Hancock also claims he did a “pretty good job” during Covid, despite 16,000 people dying in care homes after his decision not to test residents who were being discharged from hospital.

Nicola Methven