'I'm A Celebrity': Campaign launched to make Matt Hancock do every trial

I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! viewers are being urged to make Matt Hancock do every bushtucker trial on the show in a newspaper campaign.

The Daily Star has devoted Thursday's front page to asking readers to vote for the disgraced former health secretary – and current MP – to be tortured with bug-infested challenges when he enters the jungle for the ITV show.

Read more: I'm A Celebrity's most targeted contestants ever

Picturing Hancock with a clown nose, the front page headline reads: "Vote Coco", also adding: "Keep on kicking him in ballots...until the creep crawls off home."

The Star tells readers: "Join Daily Star campaign to make ex-clown do every trial."

It also includes: "Thought for the day: Don't let this loser be a bush ducker."

However, it might not be possible to vote Hancock into many of the trials as he is reportedly suffering from trench foot after filming another reality series, Channel 4's Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, in October which could rule him out of challenges on medical grounds.

It can take up to six months to recover from trench foot which Hancock is said to have developed from standing in water for a long time while filming the series that is yet to air.

Last year's series saw Naughty Boy struggle with being voted into seven trials in a row, while Katie Price quit the jungle in her second appearance on the show in 2009 after nine days because she kept being voted into trials.

Hancock was revealed this week to be a planned late addition to the camp's line-up in Australia, leading him to have the parliamentary whip suspended so that he will no longer be a member of the Conservative Party.

Defending his decision, Hancock claimed he had signed up to the reality TV jaunt while he should be serving his constituents so that he could relate to younger voters and because politicians should not be "in ivory towers", adding: "I haven’t lost my marbles or had one too many pina coladas."

Read more: I'm A Celebrity 2022's full line-up confirmed

The decision has offended many, including his constituents, fellow politicians, and members of the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which has launched a petition to have Hancock removed from the I'm A Celebrity line-up that is approaching 35,000 signatures.

The petition reads: "Matt Hancock isn’t a ‘celebrity’, he’s the health secretary who oversaw the UK having one of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid-19 whilst breaking his own lockdown rules.

"The fact that he is trying to cash in on his terrible legacy, rather than showing some humility or seeking to reflect on the appalling consequences of his time in government says it all about the sort of his person he is.

"Families were ripped apart by Matt Hancock’s actions, and turning on the TV to see him being paraded around as a joke is sickening.

"If he had any respect for families who lost loved ones to COVID-19, he would be sharing his private emails with the COVID Inquiry, not eating bugs on TV.

"Then again, perhaps if those emails came to light no TV station would touch him with a barge pole. ITV should do the decent thing and remove him from the programme. Over 200,000 people lost their lives to COVID-19 across the UK."

It continues: "Matt Hancock was at the very centre of decisions such as locking down late, allowing large scale sporting events to go ahead as the virus ran rampant and failed to get our healthcare workers the PPE [personal protective equipment] they needed.

"On top of that he was fired after breaking the rules he helped set.

"His profiteering and shameless search for publicity in the run up to his book launch is another insult to already grieving families."

I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! returns to ITV on Sunday at 9pm, with Hancock expected to join the camp later next week.

Watch: Which politicians have appeared on reality TV?