The strange allure of super-dweeb Matt Hancock

Rowan Pelling is immune to the former health secretary’s charms, but has seen powerful men make professional women go weak at the knees – and knows how strong an aphrodisiac Westminster can be

Action man: former health secretary Matt Hancock (AFP)

Matt Hancock is what my schoolfriends and I, aged 17, would have unkindly called a “dweeb”. Maybe even a super-dweeb. What we would have meant by that is he seems gawky, bungling, eager but hopeless, fatally lacking in charisma, wit and social graces. Politics’ very own version of Frank Spencer.

And yet somehow, during lockdown, he managed to attract the undeniably gorgeous Gina Coladangelo to his side – a woman he’d known since his Oxford student days, but who seemed out of his league back then. So, what’s changed? Or to alter the question made famous by Mrs Merton: what was it that first attracted you to cabinet minister Matthew Hancock?

The fact is power works like catnip on many women. Men who wouldn’t have warranted a second glance as an accountant, or even a backbencher, suddenly acquire a sexy sheen when they are promoted to secretary of state, with the sudden ability to hold sway over huge budgets and millions of lives. Even more so, you imagine, when they’re in charge of the nation’s health during a crisis, when they can muster top scientists and logistics people round a table and talk about “saving lives”, “battling the virus” and using language more suited for war.

There was probably a short window where Hancock felt like Wing Commander Guy Gibson in 1943, about to lead his Dambusters into the Ruhr Valley.

And Coladangelo fell for this veneer of political glamour – though, seeing his woeful performance at the Covid Inquiry this week, she must be feeling a great dollop of buyer’s remorse. But she’s hardly the first woman to be led astray by politics’ own version of beer goggles. I’ve watched the phenomenon up close in my 32 years in journalism and have always been astonished by how many women are mesmerised by power.

The first time I witnessed the effect, I was just out of university and working for a current affairs publication. An older journalist colleague was friendly with David Mellor just as he was promoted from relative obscurity to become secretary of state for culture. Mellor was extremely clever and cultured – great company, too – but it’s fair to say he wasn’t George Clooney.

Another great friend of the hack was the gorgeous, leggy, funny actress Antonia de Sancha, not long out of Rada. One evening, I was asked to join all three in a small trattoria off the King’s Road. It was the first time Mellor met de Sancha, and I’ll never forget the way she fixed on him like an Exocet missile finding its target.

“I’m just an actress,” she said admiringly, “but you make a difference to other people’s lives!”

She was hamming it up a bit, but she told me afterwards she was bored with hanging out with actors. I was, perhaps, the only person in the UK who wasn’t surprised when the affair between Mellor and de Sancha was revealed by the News of the World. Proximity to Westminster can be a very strong aphrodisiac.

Around that time, another hack introduced me to George Galloway, then MP for Glasgow Hillhead. He asked me out for lunch and, because he was both entertaining and intriguingly Machiavellian, I went. At end of the meal, he said he’d like to send me a copy of his maiden speech to Parliament. It was clear that this had worked as an act of seduction many times previously, but I’m afraid it made me want to laugh; I thought of offering to send him an A-level essay in return. Lest you wonder, I didn’t succumb, but I still have that speech somewhere in my papers.

But perhaps the most striking example of sudden political allure I ever witnessed came a decade ago when I was asked on Tom Bradby’s ITV discussion programme, The Agenda. George Osborne was a fellow guest and I remember everyone in the green room being mesmerised by the way a young Westminster toiler fluttered around him like he was a Hollywood star, looking daggers at any other woman who approached.

“Poor woman,” said a major daytime TV star to me, “she’s in love”. Being Chancellor of the Exchequer had turned him from economics geek into Adonis.

But why is anyone surprised? The death of Henry Kissinger this week has served to remind us all how this bespectacled geek earnt the soubriquet “Washington’s Greatest Swinger”, because of relationships with great beauties like the actresses Candice Bergen, Shirley Maclaine and Jill St John. And a 1972 poll of Playboy bunnies revealed that Kissenger topped a poll of men they’d like to date.

We may like to laugh at the phenomenon, but perhaps we should heed some lessons from the clear evidence that the cloak of power lends men considerable sex appeal. The fact is the allure of manly good looks can fade swiftly if that handsome face isn’t underpinned by intellect, substance and a winning sense of humour.

Many modern career women have a not-so secret longing for an Alpha male who can actually do stuff for them. Male beauty alone won’t open the doors to fancy restaurants, introduce them to the PM and other global leaders, or take them on a winter holiday to Davos.

And who doesn’t want to be the first to know political gossip? In fact, knowing stuff that other people don’t is one of the most powerful turn-ons known to womankind; it gives you the edge in every social situation you encounter. It’s why Sasha Swire’s diaries were so damn entertaining.

In the long run, given the choice between a nice-but-dull male model and George Osborne, or even David Mellor, I’d take the MPs every time. They’re smart, superbly well-informed and entertaining. But I’d still draw the line at Hancock.