Hunt says he was inspired by Reagan's soulmate, Margaret Thatcher.
'I am a child of Margaret Thatcher. I grew up in the Home Counties, which did not suffer the hardships of the medicine she administered. But I passionately supported her.' He is keen to stress his Tory moderniser credentials. 'I'm a radical, but I'm a child of my times. I have no problem with gay marriage. And my wife is Chinese.'
Hunt's Commons clash with Labour's health spokesman Andy Burnham was brutal
But how can someone with such a privileged background understand ordinary people?
OK, he may have gone to Charterhouse not Eton . . . Hunt interjects: 'Ah you've found it! I didn't go to Eton, it's been tough!'
More seriously, he reflects: 'Yes, I had a massively privileged start to my life.
'But all the things I have achieved have been through hard work. I set up my business from scratch.'
His online educational publishing firm Hotcourses employs more than 200 people. How much is he worth? Five million pounds? Ten? Hunt refuses to say. 'Nice try, Simon.'
Asked the worst thing that has ever happened to him and the wounds left by the BSkyB row are still raw. 'It was the political equivalent of being accused of a murder you didn't commit.
'It was horrific. The whole world was accusing me of something I hadn't done. The only thing that kept me strong was my family.
'My wife Lucia was amazing. It was a few months after our daughter was born so we had her parents over from China.
'Her father said it was like China's Cultural Revolution with hordes of journalists outside my doorstep in Pimlico.
'My wife and I thought we had to fight till the truth came out.'
Hunt frankly concedes his excruciating texts sent to Murdoch's aide Fred Michel, calling him 'daddy' and 'mon ami' were naïve. 'Yeah, they probably were.'
Hunt can appear wooden, but he has a romantic streak. After studying politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, he went to Japan to study Japanese – for unrequited love. 'OK, let me tell you the story,' he confides. 'My first girlfriend was Japanese, so when I left Oxford I wanted to learn a hard language and I picked Japanese. But when I came back she didn't want to see me – I was desperate to show off!'
He is quick to add a happy ending: 'Now I have ended up with a wife who is Chinese!' Hunt met Chinese-born Lucia Guo in 1998, through his company. Their love affair survived a minor blip when a newspaper article said he was 'ideal husband material except for the small matter of a Chinese girlfriend'.
Lucia demanded to know why she had been dismissed as a 'small matter'. Mr Hunt proved she meant the world to him by marrying her a year later in her native province of Xian. They have a young son and daughter. I cannot help noticing the Oriental theme in his love life. 'Japan and China are as different as Italy and Germany,' he says, defensively. After learning Japanese to impress one girlfriend, he is now studying Chinese to impress his wife, or rather his in-laws.
'I have to start again with Mandarin because my parents-in-law don't speak English. I haven't got beyond "Would you like a cup of tea?" yet, but they are lovely.'
Hunt has a habit of putting his foot in it: He narrowly avoided hitting a woman when a hand bell flew from his grasp during the Olympics. And his quip to the Queen about her appearance with James Bond in the Olympic video (telling her that a Japanese tourist had said their emperor would never jump out of a plane) fell to earth faster than the Royal lookalike skydiver.
'I may be somewhat accident-prone,' he concedes.
Snake-hipped Hunt once said that his favourite leisure activity was the lambada dance, but he has given it up to read bedtime stories to his children.
Their favourite is The Gruffalo, about a quick-witted mouse that discovers even the biggest, scariest monster is not that frightening.
Jeremy Hunt is the Tory mouse that roared. He is determined to kill off their bete noir: Being painted as political monsters who cannot be trusted with the NHS. He dismisses the idea he wants to be PM, but then again so does his ferociously ambitious role model Michael Gove.
Hunt says he has seen for himself how the NHS can fail the elderly.
'I was at an A&E unit doing a shift with the staff, helping with odd jobs, when they admitted a woman with dementia in her 90s. She had come from a care home, yet they didn't know a thing about her.
'In this day and age, for someone to be admitted to A&E and for the hospital not to even be able to access notes, know if she was diabetic or whether she could speak, is terrible. I saw her with my own eyes,' he exclaims, his sense of shock still palpable.
How do the staff respond when they discover the identity of the mystery 'shift worker'? 'They generally say, "He's so nice, he's not what we expected" – which I suppose is a back-handed compliment.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2371916/Jeremy-Hunt-pictured-nurses-tunic-undercover-hospital-mission.html#ixzz2ZgyzxCIo
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