was ruthlessly mocked by his Irish girlfriend as were beaten by in their opener.

The reigning champions secured a bonus-point victory in Dublin with Jamison Gibson-Park, Bundee Aki, Tadhg Beirne and Dan Sheehan all scoring tries.

England took an early lead through debutant Cadan Murley and were ahead by five points at the break. However, they were powerless to prevent Ireland from turning the screw in the second half.

Tom Curry and Tommy Freeman scored a couple of late tries to earn the visitors a losing bonus point, but it was not enough to avoid a 27-20 defeat.

Clarkson is known to be partial to a bit of rugby, having been spotted dancing alongside David Cameron in the stands when England beat Ireland in last year's Six Nations.

His girlfriend had the last laugh on this occasion, though. , who has been dating Clarkson since 2017, twisted the knife with a cheeky post after the final whistle.

On her story, Hogan posted a graphic from the match alongside an Irish shamrock emoji. She captioned it: "Jeremy [said]: 'This is boring'. Not for me. One of us will be happy come the final whistle."

It remains to be seen where England will go from here, with their Grand Slam hopes already over and a tough test against France coming up next weekend.

Maro Itoje, who captained the Red Roses for the first time, : "I thought the first half was fantastic. We did pretty much everything we wanted to. We lost territory though in the second half and struggled to exit.

"It is hard to dissect what the reason is right now, but it was a territory thing. It was a tremendous honour to captain this side. I grew up watching and wanting to play for England, but it is not really about me.

"Hopefully next week we can be better. This is a tight competition and every point matters. I am proud of us tonight."

England head coach Steve Borthwick added: "We gave them field position and scoreboard pressure in a critical period, but I am very proud of the way the players attacked the game in the first half and how they came back to score a couple of tries.

"It is hard to quantify. We started the second half with a lot of energy and effort but against one of the best attacking teams in the world the team improved defensively, but ultimately we came up short and that is disappointing."