How to be a badass while self-isolating, by Matt Hancock

YO. Matt here. You may have noticed I consider myself pretty damn cool. So after my Covid scare, here’s how I’m self-isolating with ATTITUDE. Party on, dudes!

Not wearing a tie on Zoom calls

Nothing screams ‘sexy rebel’ louder than a shirt with no tie and the top button undone, so that’s what I opt for in online press conferences. In the evening I put on a Next leather jacket and host a triv quiz for other MPs with my favourite badass rock band playing the background: T’Pau.

Wild drinking

At Oxford me and the lads, by which I mean my two house cats, would crack open the White Lightning and go mental. It’s difficult to play Edward Ciderhands with cats because they run off before you can tape the bottles to their paws, but I’d often drink almost a whole glass before being violently sick and missing a lecture the next day.

DIY karaoke

In parliament I’m revered as a party animal, and I’m not going to let Jeremy Hunt steal my street cred, so I’ve hooked up my Nintendo Wii and got back into Just Dance. I can throw some pretty mean shapes to ‘Africa’ by Toto, but annoyingly Theresa May still holds the high score on ‘Dancing Queen’.

Getting high

I’m a bit of a Hunter S Thompson on the quiet. Sometimes I’ll neck an extra large coffee with an extra espresso shot. It’s the ultimate buzz. Why do you think I cried on Good Morning Britain? It wasn’t a woefully ill-judged attempt to be popular, it was because I was on a hideous caffeine comedown.

Looking out of the window and crying

Another way to pass the time in isolation is to stare longingly out of the window with a tear rolling down your face, like Rachel from Friends. I’m not suggesting I ever do that – a badass like The Mattster is more likely to be watching a really terrifying horror film like Annabelle and hardly being scared at all.

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The Brexiter's guide to contradicting yourself

DO you worry that your arguments sometimes conflict with what you said moments earlier? Don’t worry – here Brexiter Martin Bishop explains how to hold two contradictory views.

Let’s get rid of foreigners. But we need them to do the crap jobs

Not a problem. You won’t find me or anyone I know picking fruit, serving in a restaurant or working on a building site in the freezing cold, so I’ll just breezily say ‘more jobs for British people’ then go to the bar, during which the topic will have passed.

Fishing rights mean everything. Who cares about fishing?

It might sound strange to rant about fishing for years, then not give a toss when fishermen can’t sell their stock because of Brexit. But what people don’t understand is that for Brexiters, fishing rights are all about pissing off the French. Who cares whether we actually sell any fish? Nothing contradictory there.

Northern Ireland belongs to Britain. But let them have food shortages

I’m fanatically proud of the United Kingdom, so naturally we should do anything to protect our own in Northern Ireland. Having said that, it’s only a tiny little place so they don’t need much food. And I can’t understand what they’re saying most of the time.

Buy British, apart from my new BMW

These border problems show that we should all be buying British. However I’m entitled to buy a German car, Korean TV, American phone, Belgian lager and mountains of Chinese stuff, because I’ve just added cheddar cheese, four Granny Smith apples and a pork pie to my Tesco order.

Brexit will be great for Britain. But it’s looking terrible for Britain

Just detail. Good managers and clear thinkers like me don’t get bogged down in detail. Imagine all the terrible things that would happen if you did.

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