Matt Hancock on Tuesday reacted to footage of the first people in the UK receiving the coronavirus vaccine by apparently trying to cry on live TV and then giving up and laughing instead.

The health secretary was appearing on Good Morning Britain alongside Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid. 

A sceptical-looking Morgan jiggled his pen as Hancock snuffled and snorted his way through the bizarre reaction to witnessing 81-year-old William Shakespeare (yes, really) receiving the jab.

Shakespeare, an in-patient at University Hospital Coventry, was the second person to have the injection after 90-year-old Margaret Keenan.

Shakespeare said he was “pleased” to receive the jab, adding: “I need to say, the staff at this hospital are wonderful.”

Hancock spluttered weirdly: “It’s been such a tough year for so many people. And there’s William Shakespeare putting it so simply that we can get on with our lives. I’ve still got this worry. We can’t blow it now, Piers – we’ve still got to get the vaccine to millions of people and so we’ve got to keep sticking by the rules.”

Despite this being a rollout of a vaccine that was not engineered by British scientists, Hancock then added: “There’s so much work that’s gone into this and it makes me proud to be British.”

Hancock’s outburst has seen him compared to a malfunctioning android, Mark Zuckerberg and, er, American Psycho Patrick Bateman.

One person simply remarked: “This is North Korea level weird.”