Matt Hancock’s claims in a new book have caused outrage and bemusement - and here are five of his most eye-catching.
The ex-health secretary has whined about the backlash he has suffered since being caught on CCTV kissing aide Gina Coladangelo in breach of his own coronavirus rules.
And he has even blamed frontline staff for care home deaths in his book Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story Of Britain's Battle Against Covid, which has been serialised in the Daily Mail.
Details have been revealed as he returned to Westminster for the first time following his controversial appearance on ITV's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
Hancock has looked back over his time as health secretary during the Covid crisis and has defended his actions while being quick to blame others for mistakes.
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Getty Images)Here are five shocking statements from the book:
1. 'Life miserable'
Hancock has complained that public anger over his rule-breaking affair had made "life miserable".
“As a consequence of our decision to live life, we have had a shockingly awful 18 months. It’s been absolutely horrific. I’ve had an absolute bucket of s*** poured over my head. The even bigger bucket of s*** has been poured over Gina’s," he told the Daily Mail.
Hancock, 44, was forced to quit his Cabinet job after footage emerged of their snog in his Whitehall office. He left his wife and children to set up home with Miss Coladangelo, 44, on the night their affair became public last year.
2. Broke Covid rules out of 'love'
Hancock told how he fell in love with Miss Coladangelo, who was an old university pal, after she started working for him during the pandemic.
“We realised we had feelings for each other which were as strong as they were. It was very sudden and took us both by surprise," he said.
Nauseatingly, he told how in her role as an adviser on his speeches she helped him “reach emotional depths I couldn’t reach on my own”.
He added: “We talked to each other and communicated at a very profound level.”
Appealing to the public to change their minds on him, he said: “I want forgiveness for the mistake I made, the failure of leadership at the end of the pandemic when I fell in love with Gina and I broke the guidance that I’d signed off. I want forgiveness for the human error I made ... but I’m not asking for forgiveness for how I handled the pandemic.”
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James Gourley/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)3. Blaming care workers
The disgraced former minister had tried to point the finger at care workers for the spread of Covid in care homes in the early days of the pandemic.
Hancock defended his handling of one of the most controversial episodes of the pandemic - the decision to release care home residents from hospital without testing - which was blamed for thousands of deaths.
While being widely blamed for the decision, in his memoir Hancock tries to point the finger elsewhere, claiming: “The vast majority of infections were brought in from the wider community, mainly by staff.”
He said the then chief executive of NHS England Sir Simon (now Lord) Stevens had been pushing for elderly hospital patients who did not need urgent treatment to be discharged.
On April 2, he noted: "The tragic but honest truth is we don't have enough testing capacity to check anyway. It's an utter nightmare, but it's the reality."
In mid-July, Hancock said he received a "startling note" in his ministerial red box suggesting most cases in care homes were brought in by staff with the virus whose managers allowed them to continue working - something he later describes as "scandalous".
4. Tory ministers shrugged at potential Covid death toll
Hancock revealed that Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty warned two months before the country was put into lockdown that the virus could kill as many as 820,000 people across the UK.
The MP claims that when he shared this information with Tory Cabinet colleagues the reaction was “somewhat shrug shrug”.
In his book, Hancock said Sir Chris had warned him on January 17 that there was a "50:50 chance" that the virus, which had broken out in China, would reach Britain.
Eleven days later, at a meeting with officials, Sir Chris spelled out what that could mean.
"In his characteristically understated way, sitting at the back peeling a tangerine, Chris Whitty quietly informed everyone that in the reasonable worst-case scenario as many as 820,000 people in the UK may die. The transmission is so high that almost everyone would catch it," he wrote.
"The whole room froze. We are looking at a human catastrophe on a scale not seen here for a century."
But when he shared the forecast with a Brexit Day meeting of the Cabinet in Sunderland on January 31, Hancock said it was met largely with indifference.
"The reaction was somewhat 'shrug shrug' - essentially because they didn't really believe it. I am constantly feeling that others, who aren't focused on this every day, are weeks behind what's going on," he said.
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POOL/AFP via Getty Images)5. Boris Johnson
Hancock claimed that Boris Johnson had been reluctant to engage the issue of a pandemic and when he first raised the outbreak in China with the then prime minister in early January, his response had been: "You keep an eye on it. It will probably go away."
A month later, he said he warned Mr Johnson that while it might still be possible to contain the virus, it was "more likely we're going down". The reply, he said, was simply: "Bash on."
He said Mr Johnson's attitude was shared by his chief adviser Dominic Cummings, who thought Covid was "a distraction from our official withdrawal from the EU next week. That's all he wants Boris talking about".