Jeremy Hunt goes full-on Action Man – only without the personality

Since Team Boris managed to rig the vote to get him into the final two, Jeremy Hunt has been on a media blitz to persuade Conservatives there is more to him than being Barbie’s eye candy Ken. He has been spotted drinking Irn-Bru and eating fish and chips. He’s worn a hi-vis jacket. He’s eaten pizza and drunk a milkshake. He’s told people he’s a big fan of cheese. How well hard can a man get? He’s even gone for laughs by saying he’d rather fight one Boris-sized duck than 100 duck-sized Borises. Not so much a Ken as a full-on Action Man. Only without the personality.

But too much excitement can play havoc with a man’s mind and, for his appearance on Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show, Hunt was firmly back in smouldering, buttoned-up Ken mode. The man whose eyes have launched a thousand ships and whose lips have sunk them. Vine got stuck in immediately, challenging him to counter Johnson’s “do or die” October Brexit deadline.

“I’m a negotiator, I’m an entrepreneur,” Ken said, reverting to mind-numbing type. The Death of a Salesman. He wanted to deliver Brexit. He really, really did. Every day we remained in the EU was a day too long. “I’m a businessman, I’m an entrepreneur,” he repeated, his voice box stuck on repeat. He was going to get a deal because his approach was going to be different. What had been missing was the Democratic Unionist party, those smooth-talking bastards who were known for bringing goodwill and charm to any troubled waters. So he’d have them onboard.

But hey! If it all went wrong then Ken was tougher than the rest. He’d take the UK out of the EU without even a blink. Mainly because both his eyes were now jammed open. Everywhere he’d gone as foreign secretary, people had come up to tell him how much they admired our politicians and how brilliant the UK was. He’s clearly not a man who appreciates sarcasm or irony. So everything would be great whatever happened. It rather made you wonder why he bothered.

Ken never wholly recovered from that. He got noticeably tetchy when Vine remarked that he was the richest person in the cabinet – presumably because he felt he had yet again been underestimated – and his discomfort was complete when a caller named Julian tried to engage him on the subject of Nazi tyranny. Didn’t he know Action Man soldier was the first person ashore on D-day?

Sensing Ken was having a bad day, Vine invited him to chill out and choose a piece of music. “I’d like the Lambada,” he said. This took him back to the days when he was Action Man gigolo. The single man with the chiselled good looks who had left every dancefloor in Brazil moist with sexual tension.

“Thees eez a vair intimate dance,” Ken confided in his best Portuguese. “So maybe not one for married listeners.” Music for the laydeez … Music to grind to. This was an unwanted insight into Ken’s sex life and it did make you wonder what he did on his spring-floored dancefloor at home. Maybe he just stared at his reflection in the mirror. After all, no one did it better than him.

Vine then invited him to describe the naughtiest thing he had ever done. Ken demurred. Probably best not to mention the threesome in the favela. Or that he had completely screwed over large parts of the NHS. But he could say that he didn’t spend his time building imaginary buses like Boris. Rather, he was looking forward to sailing with his children. Mainly because he knew who they were and could fit them all into one boat. Ken ended by promising to spend about £20bn on social care, taking his total spending commitments to well over £100bn inside a week. Action Man banker is still very much a work in progress.

For his part, Boris Johnson chose to spend the day playing with his toys while his aides tried to work out some policies for him. But his absence didn’t go wholly unnoticed at prime minister’s questions. Though Theresa May’s did – she is now unknown even to herself. Labour MPs all wore “free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe” badges as a warning shot of what’s in store for Johnson, and the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, described him as a pathological liar.

Normally such language would provoke uproar in the House of Commons, but now everyone on the Tory benches just shrugged. It was no more than the truth. A statement of fact. So what if Boris had no grasp of reality? So what if he had a personality disorder and no fixed abode? So what if those who knew him best were the ones who trusted him least? This was the Conservative party’s chance to play its sick joker. And the joke was going to be on the whole country.