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30 June 2021updated 02 Aug 2023 4:16pm

Victoria Newton’s Diary: How the Sun got its Matt Hancock scoop

When I called Hancock I told him that we had the story and that I was running it because the public interest was so strong.

By Victoria Newton

The news desk had been contacted by an angry whistle-blower. They claimed to have irrefutable evidence that the married Secretary of State for Health was breaching his own lockdown rules by having an office affair with an aide. My first thought was – bloody hell, what a story, it can’t be true.

The source told us they had footage of Matt Hancock kissing his glamorous ­adviser Gina Coladangelo on 6 May in his ­Westminster office. A quick check of the government rules that Hancock himself had devised and demanded that the nation follow showed that kissing someone from another household was most definitely not allowed. This was an open and shut case of ­public interest – and a contender for story of the year.

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