Nearly a decade ago, the then prime minister, David Cameron, suspended Nadine Dorries, then party whip, after she appeared on I’m a Celebrity. And it seems the wound never healed, as the culture secretary tweeted a photo of Cameron joking that he looked like “a ticket tout”. The tweet, showing a picture of Cameron wearing a baseball cap and a lumberjack shirt at Cocklebarrow Races, near Cheltenham, was captioned: “Whether it’s a major music festival, sporting event or concert, it’s important that people pay a fair price to see the events they love. Please remain vigilant when considering to buy from ticket touts. Guidance is available if you are unsure.”
Cameron suspended the whip from Dorries when she appeared on I’m a Celebrity in 2012, after failing to disclose her absence to film the show. The whip was later returned to her in 2013. The tweet spawned a number of imitators, including one who posted a photo of a bookmakers with the image of Cameron in his casual outdoor outfit waiting outside, appearing to naturally fit into the scene.
Another said he looked like he was in the market for some livestock, while one person said he resembled an extra from The Full Monty.
Dorries was not the only person with the same idea. A tweet posted several hours before her used the same image and captioned it: “Big Dave, buying and selling tickets outside Royal Ascot.”
This is not the first time that Dorries has sought to exact revenge for her treatment by Cameron. Speaking to BBC Two’s Daily Politics in 2012, Dorries said: “Unfortunately, I think that not only are Cameron and [chancellor George] Osborne two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, but they are two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition and no passion to want to understand the lives of others – and that is their real crime.” • This article was amended shortly after publication on 25 January 2022 to indicate that comments attributed to a “Sir Michael Take” came from the “spoof” Twitter account of a fictional former MP. The paragraph was removed entirely later the same day.