THE last picture of former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott showed him beaming alongside his wife Pauline in a heartwarming birthday snap.
Prescott passed away peacefully in a care home yesterday after a battle with Alzheimer’s.
He had been living in a care home following a stroke in 2019 and died “peacefully” surrounded by family.
The final snap, posted on his official X account, formerly Twitter, showed him happily smiling next to wife Pauline as she clutched a birthday cake.
Prescott married Pauline, 85, in 1961 and they had two children together – David and Jonathan.
The picture is understood to be celebrating Pauline’s 82nd birthday back in 2021.
In a statement announcing his death, Lord Prescott’s wife and two sons said: “We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved husband, father and grandfather, John Prescott, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 86.”
The family added: “John spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment.
“He did so from his time as a waiter on the cruise liners to becoming Britain’s longest serving deputy prime minister.
“John dearly loved his home of Hull and representing its people in Parliament for 40 years was his greatest honour.”
John first met future wife Pauline “Tilly” Tilston at a bus stop in 1957 when home in Chester from his trip to New Zealand.
Pauline spoke about how she fell for John after meeting him under Chester’s Eastgate Clock in her autobiography Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking.
She wrote: “A voice at my elbow startled me. ‘Hi there, it’s Pauline, isn’t it?’. I turned and found myself face-to face with a man I knew only as the ex-boyfriend of Barbara, a girl I worked with. His name was John Prescott.”
John recalled: “I went across, we chatted and I asked her if she’d like to go to the pictures.
“She said yes, so we made a date.
“We were both on the rebound, so it was fortunate timing. Can’t remember what the film was, but I know she talked all the way through it and I was a bit embarrassed.”
Pauline also revealed the former Deputy Prime Minister, then a steward on the Cunard and White Star shipping lines, was funny if not always a great romantic.
In the summer of 1959, John told her he was taking her for a meal at the Patten Arms hotel and restaurant in Warrington where he worked as a commis chef.
She knew he was going to pop the question but it was en route, in the unusual setting of a train toilet, that the secretly “shy” Prescott decided to propose rather risk embarrassment in front of an audience.
After a courtship that involved a lot of dancing at jazz clubs, the pair married in 1961, despite his brother Ray losing the rings on the day.
Prescott served as Deputy PM from 1997 to 2007 as a member of the Labour Party.
He was a key New Labour power broker who often managed the tense relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Paying tribute, ex-PM Blair said: “I am devastated by John’s passing. He was one of the most talented people I ever encountered in politics.”
Prescott was first elected MP for Kingston upon Hull East in 1970 – holding the seat for almost 40 years.
He first joined the shadow cabinet in 1983 with the transport brief, before quickly rising through Labour ranks.
As Deputy PM Prescott played a big role negotiating the 1997 Kyoto climate change agreement.
And he was widely seen as a working-class tribune who ensured Labour’s union backers went along with Blair’s centrist reforms.
But he remains most famous for punching a protester who threw an egg at him during a rally in 2001.
The politician later joked about the incident quipping: “There was only one punch.
“Tony Blair rang me and he said ‘Are you OK?’ and I said ‘Yes’, and he said ‘Well, what happened?’.
“I said ‘I was just carrying out your orders. You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did’.”
By Trevor Kavanagh
Kavanagh
JOHN Prescott, a former Cunard Line waiter who rose to be deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair, was the last authentic voice of the working classes to serve in high office.
The MP for Hull, known as The Mouth of The Humber, spoke for the trade unions in a New Labour government which finally broke their stranglehold over economic and industrial policy.
As deputy leader of the Labour Party, he also refereed the infamous
“TeeBee-GeeBees” flare-ups between Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown during their battle for the Labour crown.
Burly “Prezza”, a prize-winning boxer, was a bruiser both inside and outside Parliament.
In the 2001 election campaign, he was hit in the face by an egg thrown by a protestor.
Prescott, a man with a hair-trigger temper, landed a powerful left jab before police intervened.
“There was only one punch,” he explained afterwards. “Tony Blair rang and asked what happened.
“I said: ‘You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did’.”
Lord Prescott, who has died aged 86, was proud of his working-class roots and as a blunt-speaking Northerner.
But he was born in Prestatyn and regarded himself as a Welshman.
In later life he admitted carrying a chip on his shoulder after his brother Ray was rewarded with a new bike for passing his 11-plus to a grammar school.
John failed and got nothing.
What he saw as a gross injustice fuelled a lifelong resentment towards elitism – even within his own party – and an insecurity which drove him close to the top of the political greasy pole.
He was deeply hurt that in 10 years as deputy PM, he and his glamorous wife, Pauline – an Elizabeth Taylor lookalike – were never invited to dinner at Chequers, the PM’s official home.
Prescott blamed Blair’s “snobbish” wife, Cherie.
“We never got close to the Blairs,” he said. “It just didn’t happen. We were not their set. Certainly we were not her set.”
The former ship’s steward was mocked by toffee-nosed Tories such as
Nicholas Soames who greeted him in the Commons, crying: “Mine’s a gin-and-tonic, Giovanni.”
And he was teased for mangling the English language, once complaining “the sceptre of unemployment stalking the north-east”.
As Environment supremo, he boasted: “The Green Belt is a Labour
achievement – and we mean to build on it.”
But the son of a railway signaller was no fool.
He studied economics and politics at Ruskin College, Oxford, and scored a BSc degree at Hull University.
He enjoyed his success, living in a turreted mock-Tudor mansion and playing croquet on the lawns of his official home, Dorneywood.
An avowed socialist, he earned his “Two Jags” nickname by driving an XJ6 Jaguar and using a chauffeur-driven XJ8 for government business.
“My roots, my background, the way I act is working class, but it would by hypocritical to say I’m anything other than middle class now,” he admitted.
John Prescott’s remarkable political career crumbled dramatically in 2006 when his two-year love affair with bubbly secretary Tracey Temple was exposed after her jealous lover read her diary.
Tracey, who sold her story to a Sunday newspaper for £250,000, described “groping and kissing” in the Deputy PM’s office and his opulent grace-and-favour Admiralty office flat.
“We were very lucky we were never caught – as we never shut the door,” noted Tracey, played by Maxine Peake in “Confessions of a Diary Secretary”.
“When I went into his office for diary meetings, if I was wearing a skirt he would slide his hand up my leg, under it.
“He used to stroke my back. And, yes, I did give him sex in the office a
couple of times.
“I knew what we were doing was risky but we both got carried away.
“Seven civil servants worked right outside his office. Of course there were moments when I thought, I shouldn’t be doing this.
“I also thought how surprised and shocked people would be if this ever got out.”
Prezza resigned as deputy Labour leader telling the 2006 party conference: “I know I let myself down. I let you down.
“So conference, I apologise.”
Nine years later he returned to front-line politics as unpaid adviser to Ed Miliband on climate change.
Prescott suffered a stroke while campaigning for Mr Corbyn at the 2019 election and retired from politics.
