Former footballer Jermaine Pennant knocked Matt Hancock to the ground in a vicious brawl on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
The former health secretary is back on reality TV after finishing third on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! earlier this year.
In the Channel 4 reality programme, he now appears with Gareth Gates, Melinda Messenger, and James Argent as 16 celebrities are put through their paces in the jungle phase of SAS selection in Thung Ui, north Vietnam.
During one challenge, Pennant was given permission to punch Hancock and stated that he was only thinking about ‘not losing’.
He added: ‘It probably doesn’t matter about the fight, then after that it was like do not lose, it probably doesn’t matter about the fight… do not (be on) the losing side because I would not be allowed to walk the streets again.
‘I was just very grateful that I won and I saved face.’
In a teaser clip for the forthcoming episode, the two candidates compete in a boxing challenge in which they must hit each other for one minute.
Despite his best efforts to fight back and stay in the game, Hancock is quickly knocked to the ground.
The ex MP has previously spoken about how the trials ‘p****d[him] off’ and that he was even given an unfortunate nickname, branded ‘Matt Handj*b’.
‘They were pretty rude. Calling me names, taking the p**s out of my surname, and god, it p****d me off,’ he told The Sun.
He continued: ‘With all my flaws on the show, when you’re under massive physical strain and you’ve been woken up in the middle of the night, you can’t hide.
‘To make something like this work, you’ve just got to go all in. I went in as a politician and I came out as a human being.’
‘Jermaine is no softy – [but] it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected, being smacked in the face’, he added to the publication, thanking adrenaline for lessening the pain.
Before the new series premiered, the instructors were queried about a segment in which former Special Forces Operator and Royal Marine Mountain Leader Chris Oliver and Royal Marine Commando and Special Forces Sergeant Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox interviewed Hancock.
DS Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham, who did not participate, stated that the squad did not have ‘time’ to extract ‘everything’ from Hancock.
He added: ‘We wanted to get to really know who he was going for… and his decision making… and yeah, we pushed as far as we could to get it out of him.
‘I want to know, we all wanted to know… and yeah, I guess a nation does want to know, so we got as far as we could with him but it was hard work.’
Former US Marine Rudy Reyes stated that he wanted to get to know Hancock since “nobody likes him.”
He said: ‘I just wanted to take him as a recruit, and let his actions and how he shows up for each task and how he conducts himself, that would dictate the way that I would treat [him] but we did notice quite quickly, he can’t take criticism and we don’t like that.
‘There’s no time to bark orders… we’ve got a training schedule, we’ve got things to do and that will get [us] thrown off course and be horrible so that’s why it comes across that way.’
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins returns to on Tuesday September 26 at 9.30pm on Channel 4.
