Anyone who heard Gina Coladangelo waxing lyrical about Matt Hancock on the radio in April last year can have had no illusions about just how warmly she felt towards the Health Secretary.
The pair had been friends since their days at Oxford University, she told the BBC Radio 4 Profile programme shortly after the start of the pandemic when his reputation was already on the line.
Introduced as a 'close friend for more than 20 years', she launched into a full-blooded defence of the man she called 'determined'.
'He likes setting himself difficult goals and meeting them', she gushed, a month after she is said to have been hired to give Hancock advice on his public image.
Did one of these 'goals' involve winning the heart of the 43-year-old married mother-of-three?
Anyone who heard Gina Coladangelo waxing lyrical about Matt Hancock on the radio in April last year can have had no illusions about just how warmly she felt towards the Health Secretary. Pictured: The pair together in September 2019
Photographs which emerged this week of married Hancock and Coladangelo in a passionate clinch inside the Department of Health certainly seem to suggest so.
The Mail understands that Whitehall's Propriety and Ethics team are examining whether Hancock's conduct has breached the Ministerial Code.
They will no doubt be interested in Coladangelo's roles as a former director and current shareholder of lobbying firm Luther Pendragon, which has worked with the NHS.
'It offers clients a 'deep understanding of the mechanics of government'.
Yesterday he deleted a post from his Instagram page in which he bragged about working 'alongside some brilliant women' (far right).
Hancock and Coladangelo's relationship is said to have been an open secret at the Department of Health, where a source who spoke to the Mail yesterday described the glamorous half-Italian brunette as Hancock's 'style guru'.
The pair had been friends since their days at Oxford University, she told the BBC Radio 4 Profile programme shortly after the start of the pandemic when his reputation was already on the line
Almost constantly by his side as he battled a barrage of hostile interviews about his performance as Health Secretary, she is said to have been giving him advice on how to present himself better.
'It's not normal,' the source told the Mail, 'but I think he needed the support during the pandemic.'
Their working relationship is said to stretch back to 2019 when Coladangelo was first hired by Hancock during his futile run for the Tory leadership.
She was then 'quietly' hired in March last year on an initially unpaid six-month contract as the UK was plunged into lockdown.
In September 2020, she was made a non-executive director at the Department of Health and can claim up to £15,000 of taxpayers' money in the role which involves advising ministers and the department on strategic issues.
Ms Coladangelo is married to dashing 54-year-old multi-millionaire entrepreneur Oliver Tress, who went to Kate Middleton's school Marlborough College and founded the High Street fashion and lifestyle chain Oliver Bonas
Mr Hancock's wife Martha leaves her home in north-west London on Friday
Her role only became public when it was revealed in a newspaper in November last year.
A profile was added to the government website, making clear her background
