Yesterday in Manchester we were treated to a sad farewell speech from Deputy Prime Minister John "Two Jags" Prescott. Mr. Prescott has promised to step down from the post, but not from politics, before the next part conference. Curiously this annoucement has stirred less controversy and speculation than the Prime Minister's departure date.
Mr. Prescott is a master of the malapropism with a gift for mangling the English language surpassed by only a few (George Bush may or may not be one of them). Those wishing to study his turn of phrase need look no further than Simon Hoggart's book
Punchlines: A Crash Course in English with John Prescott (which may unfortunately be out of print).His career has been peppered with incidents that have been of equal interest to the tabloids and the broadsheets.
He has punched a protester who hit him with an egg.
He is known as "Two Jags" as he keeps (actually he may have got rid of one by now) two Jaguars, his official chauffeur driven car and one he actually owns.
At the Labour party's 1999 conference in Bournemouth he hopped in a Jag to traverse the 250 yards from his hotel to the conference centre. He later blamed this on the need to protect his wife's coiffure from the wind. He later, sans wife, repeated this performance at a climate change conference in Providence, Rhode Island.
Despite a certain physical resemblance to a bulldog and a physique like a sumo wrestler he managed to have a two year affair with his secretary. (Well - Henry Kissinger used to get laid too!)
After this affair he fought tooth and nail to hang on to his grace and favour governemnt homes even after being stripped of much of his portfolio.
No comments:
Post a Comment