Pilot Gary Biggs was unaware he was flying into a UK political spat when a client asked him to use his aircraft to parade a banner in the airspace over forest and farmland on the NSW-Queensland border this week.

Biggs was flying over the set of the UK version of the reality show I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! carrying a banner with the message “Covid bereaved say get out of here!” It was aimed at former UK health secretary Matt Hancock, who is one of the contestants on the show.

“Without knowing that the former health secretary was in the camp, I had no idea what it meant,” Biggs said. “We just had a brief, and we did our job ... [but] it’s not often you get [politicians] in the UK commenting about your little banner that flew around a farm in Dungay.”

The British Conservative Party MP oversaw the health portfolio at the height of the pandemic, and was forced to resign in June 2021 after leaked CCTV footage from inside his office revealed that he was conducting an affair at work while requiring the public to adhere to social-distancing measures.

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Hancock’s appearance on the show has made him the target of criticism from parts of the British public and fellow politicians including UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Hancock was suspended after he announced he would appear on the show, a move akin to being kicked out of the party room.

The banner, which UK advocacy group 38 Degrees has claimed responsibility for on behalf of people who lost loved ones to COVID-19 in the UK, followed a petition with more than 45,000 signatures calling for British free-to-air broadcaster ITV to dump Hancock from the show.

Lobby Akinnola, from COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said he took issue with Hancock being labelled a “celebrity”.

“He’s the former health secretary who oversaw the UK having one of the highest death tolls in the world from COVID-19 whilst breaking his own lockdown rules,” Akinnola said in a statement.