In the pantheon of my former interviewees, John Prescott began somewhere around the middle: not as juicy as Gore Vidal, but more fascinating (honestly!) than Tom Jones.
He began to rise ever upwards, to a point where I now think of him as in the top 10... I located Prescott's sweet, sad soul in the simple words: Blimmin' Marks & Spencer's trifles.
The year was 2008, and the former deputy prime minister had just published his memoirs, a book whose central revelation was that he'd suffered from bulimia, which brought him to binge on supermarket trifles.
Once we'd got past his fury at the ignorance of journalists – they said I'd failed because I was still fat! – we arrived at the kind of male vanity that always touches me.
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