Goodbye, intrepid soldier Gavin Williamson – here are your best bits! | Hannah Jane Parkinson

Straight off the bat, I’ll remind you that Gavin Williamson’s Instagram avatar is a picture of him standing in a risk-free environment in a flak jacket, and we’ll go from there.

Everyone’s favourite purchaser of Action Man toys has been sacked from the cabinet after being fingered for a leak from the National Security Council (NSC). The defence secretary leaking from a national security meeting is not the best look, but is anybody really surprised? If Williamson worked for MI5, he would be sure to mention it at every single party he wasn’t invited to.

He is, of course, a child. Not only was his idea of diplomacy telling Russia to “go away and shut up”, it’s also been said that he wrote “fuck the prime minister” on a piece of paper when he didn’t get his way one time. Truly, the only surprise is he didn’t then stick it to her back. There is no way in a non-bizarre world he would have been made defence secretary. For any country. And, you know, it’s possible he is a nasty piece of work rather than a buffoon. But I can’t comment, because there is just no way I would ever actually make the effort to get to know someone who kept a tarantula on their desk as a sort of substitute for a personality.

Anyway, Gav. Here are your best bits.

It’s important, I think, to remember the best time Gavin has ever had in his life, which was wearing an inflatable sumo-wrestler costume at a secondary school in August 2015. Gavin sports a grin like a Glasgow smile at any given moment, so it’s difficult to ascertain how genuinely happy he is, but I’m pretty sure this is 14/10 happiness.

Here is a picture of our former defence secretary holding a giant stuffed Eeyore, the morose donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh. Look how sad Eeyore is. Eeyore is, of course, known for being sad, but I don’t think the Conservative rosette is helping. Or maybe he’s contemplating Huawei being at all involved in the UK’s 5G network and what a terrible mistake that would be.

“Ok, so whatever you do, do not press this button here, OK? Gavin … are you listening? Not this button.”

“Gavin. We told you not to press the button. We each told you three times not to press the button.”

“GET OUT OF THE HELICOPTER, GAVIN.”

Never has a man been more appropriately photographed unwittingly above a sign. Williamson is the type who has never let his lack of any discernible skill hinder him. You can imagine him raising his hand on a plane during a medical emergency – pushing a surgeon with three decades of experience out of the way – before making a prone passenger’s heart attack 10 times worse and slipping into the front-aisle loo when his attempt at CPR goes to shit.

Where I do respect the puppyish Gavin is in his adoration for animals. He loves animals. In particular, dogs. But he does not stop at dogs. He is David Attenborough, if David Attenborough looked like a lad in year 10. Here, he holds a ferret. And in this way he is a bit like Paris Hilton, who is a huge ferret fan, and spent all of the noughties walking around with her ferret, named Cinderella. She is still into ferrets, because last year, like Gav, she took to Instagram to celebrate #NationalFerretDay.

Anyway, make sure you are sitting comfortably, because there is no animal Gavin Williamson will not pick up or stroke.

Gavin Williamson with two lemurs.

Gavin Williamson with a hedgehog.

Gavin Williamson with a falcon.

GAVIN WILLIAMSON WITH AN ACTUAL REINDEER.

Speaking of reindeer, a reminder of that glorious time Gavin was photographed with his US counterpart, but it looked like two flags were coming out of his head. A situation that led to him being mocked as “flag head” on Twitter. (Side note: if politicians with antlers is your thing, please enjoy this picture of Jeremy Corbyn).

There are way, way, way too many photographs of Gavin pretending to be in the army or the navy, so picking one was a real Sophie’s Choice. But I went with the infamous frame where Gavin pops up out of a hole in some ice while wearing the type of poncho Alton Towers sells you for a fiver as soon as it begins to rain.

Gavin has been in every single type of army role play – he is basically a one-man version of that paintball episode of Peep Show – and he’s not in the least bit ashamed of it. Witness the caption on this Instagram post: “This is a wonderful flashback to when I was pretending to Captain HMS Queen Elizabeth. Let’s be honest you would have done the same.” Yes, Gavin. If there was time before the first bell.

Famously a former fireplace salesman – or, as Gavin probably tells everyone, a former fireman – I enjoyed this snap of Gavin laying a fire in, according to the caption he wrote alongside it, his home. Which begs the question: where does Gavin Williamson live? Blenheim Palace? Look at the size of that thing.

In addition to animals, Gavin has been photographed many times holding up various foodstuffs. There are so many pictures of him joyously eating ice-cream, cakes or McDonald’s that it’s a wonder he wasn’t fired earlier for undermining government initiatives on healthy eating. (To be fair, who doesn’t love cake?) But to end, I like this picture, in which Gavin holds up a Sainsbury’s ready meal. Not the most glamorous of dinners – but then, he’ll have learned to cope with very basic food supplies as an intrepid soldier. The country thanks you for your service, Gav.

• Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist