Having been infamously punched in the face on Celebrity SAS Who Dare Wins, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock wouldn’t be the first person you’d call for advice on the show.
Unless your Boris Johnson’s journalist sister Rachel, that is.
For the former Celebrity Big Brother housemate revealed she had never seen the gruelling Channel 4 reality show before signing on the dotted line. So she called her brother’s old pal, who appeared on the show last year, to ask for tips.
The sister of former Tory Prime Minister Boris, says: “I never watch shows before I do them, because I find it too off putting. I did not know anything about it, but I knew Matt had done it. So, I rang him up."
That's when he gave her his four words of advice on the show, saying: "It’s brutal, but amazing." Rachel adds: "He then said, ‘Do you want to come on a training run?’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘You have to be really fit.’ I wasn’t fit at all but I didn’t go! I spent the weeks before the show at Wimbledon drinking Pimms!”.
Had Rachel watched a few episodes she would have seen Hancock - who was criticised for breaking his own social distancing rules with an affair - being broken down, punched and interrogated on the notoriously-difficult show.
Mind you, Rachel 59, says she’s had to become resilient after years of being a “punchbag” for her controversial family.
She admits she was actually in Sainsbury’s one day when two women walked past her, calling her family the c-word.
Speaking about the experience, she tells The Mirror: “They did not give me time to react because they just pushed past me with their trolley.
“It’s kind of a jungle out there and people think that if you are remotely in the public eye or you are related to someone who is, you are a target. You have to try and let it wash over you but it does affect you a bit.”
The outdoor-loving journalist added: “I have no expectation that people will change their views of me or anything else. You cannot be one of the people who do TV in the hope that people will see you on TV and suddenly like you.
“I just wanted to go and have fun and have these experiences... in a different setting, not in a claustrophobic, reality set kitchen, which I have done before, or the Big Brother house. This seemed so outdoors-ey and wild that I was attracted to it. The kind of Bond Girl element that hooked me. I see myself as a superannuated Bond Girl.”
Rachel’s one of 15 celebs taking part in the sixth series of the Channel 4 show which sees people put through their paces by four former SAS operators. The series was filmed last year in New Zealand but will hit our screens this Sunday, September 22, with new episodes each week on a Sunday and Monday. John Barrowman, Strictly Pete Wicks, Olympic gymnast Ellie Downie, former boxer Anthony Ogogo and Bianca Gascoigne are among the other names taking part.
This series - which also features Former England Rugby Captain, Chris Robshaw, Love-Islander and Campaigner, Georgia Harrison, and Pro Basketball Player, Ovie Soko - is the longest in the show’s history, with celebrities travelling further than ever before.
Halfway across the world, far from all their home comforts, they’ve been subjected to the toughest of winter warfare training over a hellish eight-day course.
Putting them through their paces are ex-Special Forces soldiers - Chief Instructor Billy Billingham and his team of Directing Staff (DS) – Foxy (Jason Fox), Rudy Reyes and Chris Oliver.
Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins begins Sunday September 22. It will be shown every Sunday and Monday, 9pm, Ch 4.
