It was an encounter that will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I first met John Prescott as a wide-eyed cub reporter in my hometown of Hull, where I worked for the local paper in the heart of his constituency. I’d been sent to cover the opening of a new school, and there was John, cutting the ribbon and probably scaring the life out of the poor scissors. Not only was I alongside him, but there were also journalists from the national papers who, to me at the time, were like Bryan Robson to an aspiring footballer.
After he was asked a mountain of questions covering every aspect of this new Victoria Dock School from these idols of mine, there was nothing else left to say. But as a sense of fear and panic washed over me over returning to the office empty-handed, being young and inexperienced, I asked him how he would respond to the recent criticism he had received over taking taxpayer-funded helicopter flights for relatively short journeys across the UK.
He was furious. Incandescent with rage. As I skulked back to my car - a third-hand three-series silver BMW that was my pride and joy - I was spun around with more force than a spin on Strictly. It was John. “What is the big f****** idea,” he boomed. “Who the hell do you think you are,” he blasted.
For the next ten minutes or so, even as his aides kept pulling at his sleeve like overworked mothers trying to drag their kids out of a sweet shop, he ripped into me. But, after about 20 minutes - which seemed like 20 hours - we ended with a handshake, and I left thinking I’d met the very spirit of Hull itself.
Fast forward six months, and I found myself covering the city's former trawlermen’s campaign to get justice for the collapse of the fishing industry. I took a train down to Number 10 with a hundred grizzled Hessle Roaders, and I wrote the next day’s front page on the journey home.
It read: “In 1977, backbench MP John Prescott told the fishermen, ‘Don’t let us as politicians let you down’—but that’s exactly what they’ve done.” The article went down a storm with the lads, but one man was furious. As I sat at my desk with the paper on sale, my phone rang.
“Hello, newsroom,” I said. "Is that Chris?" the voice on the other end replied. “It is,” I said. "It's John f****** Prescott”, he responded.
For the next 15 minutes, I was systematically dissected with world-class expletives, some I’d never even heard before. It was less of a phone call and more of a firehose of rage. My colleagues gathered around, some holding back laughs, others wide-eyed.
At one point, I put him on speaker, just to share the experience of being on the receiving end of John’s infamous hairdryer treatment. As he approached the end of the call, the deputy prime minister asked me: “Do you know what really winds me up about you, Chris?” “No, Mr. Prescott,” I said, genuinely curious.
“The first time I met you, the first f****** time, you asked me about flying around in helicopters as ‘my chosen form of transport.’ I then step outside, and what do I see? You standing next to a brand-new silver BMW.
“My car, not my bl***y ministerial Jag, my personal Jag cost me £14,000 second-hand. So, go on, Chris, tell me, how much did your car cost? "I got it for £5,575, third hand, Mr Prescott,” I said. “Well, you got a f***ing bargain, then,” he shouted before slamming the phone down.
That was just one of my many run-ins with John over the years. Once, while at Hull’s Guildhall, about to greet his wonderful wife Pauline, who gave me a friendly “Hi, Chris, how are you?” I could not get a word in before John bulldozed me to the floor. And then there was the time I was sent to hand him a pair of boxing gloves and embroidered ‘Prezza’ shorts after he famously punched his egg-throwing heckler. He never accepted them, but it was safe to say I nearly became his second KO.
But for every dressing down and bruised shoulder, I always knew John was a man of integrity who would never stop fighting for the people. That toughness, that grit, it was all because he genuinely believed in standing up for working folks. He was as tireless as he was fearless. And sometimes, you saw the softer side too.
One freezing morning in late 1999, I was shivering on the platform at Hull’s Paragon Station, waiting for the 5:50am train to London, when a figure emerged from the mist. It was John. My spine stiffened, bracing for a scolding. Instead, he extended a hand.
“I just wanted to say well done, Chris. Really proud of you,” he said, congratulating me on an award I’d recently won for my work on the paper. I was floored - not just because he knew, but because he cared enough to say it. It’s not every day you get a pat on the back from the Deputy Prime Minister at dawn.
As I found my seat on the train, I thought about popping into first class to ask if it was him or the taxpayer footing his ticket. But just this once, I let it slide. I learned the hard way you had to pick your battles with John. He was every bit the rough-around-the-edges, working-class hero I’d heard about - no-nonsense, with a glare that could melt steel, and yet, there was something undeniably decent about him.
He was a man who understood what it meant to be on the breadline of life. You could say he was the original “man of the people,” well before every politician decided to throw on a high-vis jacket and pretend to care about your boiler issues.
But as for my dressings down, I look back with only fondness upon them. Sir Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer treatment was nothing compared to my MP. John could make Fergie look like Mary Poppins with a cold.