Obituary
86.
My MP for the four years I lived in Hull though I never
met him.
While probably the last of the old school Labour pols
of the Wilson/Callaghan years, probably best
known for his right hook and malapropisms
Jake Paul will be sleeping a little easier tonight.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/nov/21/john-prescott-death-age-86-former-uk-deputy-prime-minister
Met him once outside Downing Street I think he was trying to be amusing to the school students I was with, he failed miserably.
I also met him – outside Houses of Parliament .He was joking with Glenda Jackson – you had the feeling they would have made a fine double act.
I think it was a left jab actually but good for him. Some cheeky reporter asked him if he felt like a failure to which he replied “I started serving drinks on a ferry and now I’m Deputy Prime Minister where you’re just a journalist”. Very few left like him now.
There are very few MPs who aren’t from the professional managerial class today.
“Tony asked me to connect with the voters so that’s what I did”
I really liked and admired him. Flawed, yes, but highly relatable and genuine.
Give the Man Upstairs two jabs from me, Prezza!
@black-type
Surely you mean “two Jags”?
Hope he didn’t see the abomination they’ve just made of their iconic logo and entire brand ethos
FWIW, am aware of the typo in the subject line and asked the mods to amend
Nope, I’m referring to his pugilistic prowess.
Famously owned his own Jag and also had the use of a ministerial Jag while Deputy PM, hence “two jags”
Nickname eventually mutated into “two shags” (he was playing away), “two jabs” (punch gate) and – the UK press scraping the barrel here – “two bans” )Presumably got a driving ban or some such)
Did he have two sheds?
@fitterstoke
You’re getting him mixed up with Arthur Jackson
I though it was 7th President Andrew “Two Sheds” Jackson. The proud political owner of two sheds.
This is what I was getting at…
I did know really
Never doubted it, Hubes!
Yep, I knew this. ‘Jabs’ followed on from ‘Jags’.
He used to get a lot of stick over his use of language; he was never the most traditionally eloquent of speakers. But I once heard old BBC journo John Humphries give a presentation on how politicians had learned the art of evasive answers to questions and giving speeches that didn’t mean anything, and he said that with John Prescott – despite the clumsiness of his grammar – you always understood what he was getting and that he did give straight answers.
I liked him a lot.
He was also fairly rare amongst pols for being able to laugh at himself.
It’s the only clip on YT so apols for the awful AI voice over
Yes, I seem to recall a PMQ session where he stood in for Blair against William Hague. After a particularly mangled sentence from Prescott, Hague opined, “There was so little English in that, Jacques Chirac would be proud of it!”
He sat in the row in front of me at the Barbican at an anniversary celebration of Ronnie Scott’s jazz club.
@Alias
A cousin of mine in Ireland apparently sat directly behind Gerry Adams during Leonard Cohen’s Slaine Castle gig in the late naughties. There was apparently very little unwrapping and crunching of sweets, crisps and other comestibles that night
He and Pauline were at my 18th birthday party.
Well, more realistically they were also at Westfield Country club, which is were we were holding my birthday meal. And i lived in Sutton (as featured in the Guardian today) and walked past his house on the way to school. (If you are interested, which I’m sure you arent, the Duke was seen as the more refined of the 2 pubs in the village.)
Yep. My ex-docker Uncle Wilbur frequented The Ship, ‘cos ‘e was ‘ard. 😉
My dad frequented the Duke – which required him to walk past The Ship.
And also the church which as far as I know he never went in.
He was sitting at the next table in a hotel bar in Katowice during COP 24 in 2018. He looked absolutely exhausted. But he was a gent enough to perk up when I stopped on the way out the bar to thank him for his efforts to push the climate process forwards.
“He worked as steward on a shipping line”
“For Cunard”
“Well, quite hard, certainly”.
Arf.
Quip of the Week, surely…
He was the guest quizmaster at some Labour Students’ Conference pub night I attended in 1991. Hadn’t realised quite how much he did for Kyoto Protocol, and in any case I admire the tradition of Trade Unionists who succeed in politics as they know how to negotiate.
Thinking about the ridicule he sustained, as his workplace affair came out, I wonder how many others are an undiscovered shag away from the same. Power does seem to impart an immense libido to even the least likely, and most get found out. I guess you need to weigh up your tabloid image before embarking; John Major seems to have weathered his dalliance better than, say Paddy Ashdown, altho some of that may be the horrified fascination that the image of Major and Currie, in full two back beast, offered.
John Major is such an unlikely swordsman that people have probably failed to fully absorb the info. Verging on the incomprehensible.
Paddy Ashdown, OTOH and you’d think it unsurprising, really. I can imagine women throwing themselves at Paddy, in his prime, and he not being so very resistant.
I recall seeing a comedian many years ago referencing the Major/Currie liaison and in particular the two-backed beast. For the rest of the evening I had a mental image of the two of them engaging in rumpy and indeed pumpy, fair spoilt my evening.
I don’t think Ashdown was helped after being referred to as Paddy Pantsdown in the sun.
There’s also the fact that PA’s second name was manna for any tabloid sub-editor worth his/her salt
I wonder if Edwina had a pet name for the aforementioned ‘sword’…John Minor, perhaps?
John Minimus?
Major Dennis Bloodnok?