I once had the temerity to offer John Prescott a diagnosis. It was not about bulimia, that most secret of unhappy habits which, like everyone else who knows him, I did not spot - except the loyal Pauline, who must have a PhD in Prezza by now. But it may have a bearing on the weekend revelation in his memoirs.
Back in 1989, my diagnosis was that the-then shadow minister for transport might be dyslexic. Our family had been living in the United States, where one of our children had been so diagnosed. It's a serious nuisance, but it isn't cancer and people learn to cope. Post-it notes are a handy invention.
From the symptoms we were given - "I expect he has trouble with his shoelaces" and "he writes some letters back-to-front, does he?" - we realised that it was/is a bit rampant on my wife's side. Returning to the UK, the first politician I had a serious session with was Prezza. All those misapplied and jumbled words, all that barely-repressed impatience, often bordering on anger, coupled with a determination to prove his worth. It all seemed to fit.
As I remember the suggestion, JP was wary. He'd apparently heard it before. Nothing came of it, though I couldn't helping noting later that the deputy PM who preceded him, Michael Heseltine, was also said to be mildly dyslexic and not keen to admit it. He liked briefings on one side of A4 and was keener to talk. He was also a man of action, a problem-solver with major successes - and some failures - to his credit. Like John Prescott, though neither would care for the comparison.
But Hezza (why, even the nicknames match) was a child of the middle classes, a colonel's son from Swansea. He was dispatched to Shrewsbury School, then to Oxford. The system picked him up, as it did not Prezza. He failed the 11-plus - and didn't get the promised bike - and went to sea at 15. I often think that bike is a bit like Rosebud in Citizen Kane: the key to everything.
The Prescott I knew 20 years ago was always producing policy documents, determined, as it seemed to me (based on those family insights) to master the enemy: the written word. As Matthew Parris famously observed when a Prezza speech later saved John Smith's one-member/one vote reforms on the Labour leadership - and made Blair and Prezza party leaders - the grammar may have been defective, but with Prescott you knew what he meant.
Prescott was PFI's early champion in the Labour ranks: relax the rules on borrowing for capital projects, he used to say. He and Neil Kinnock didn't get along - too much alike in some ways? - so he had to wait.
None of which ever comes cost-free. As a layman it's not my place to push my luck on the diagnosis front and Prezz, typically, dismisses explanations for his bulimia that are buried in his childhood. But in the extract from his book published in yesterday's Sunday Times he acknowledges stress. That much one can see in his public personality: impulsive, defensive, angry but also often likable. What else do we remember the 2001 election for but Prezza's punch?
Some people drink too much, as he admits to doing rarely, others (highly-strung Harold Macmillan) read Jane Austen or play tennis (Tony Blair). Prezza seems to have over-eaten and thrown up on the sly just like Princess Diana, whom he resembles in so few other ways apart from that troubled childhood.
Perhaps it should not surprise us. People who go into politics tend to be driven by many motives: power, fame, the public good, a need to prove themselves. All the same, I doubt if Jack Straw or Alistair Darling have secret tortured selves, though I wouldn't bet the pension on Gordon Brown. And now we know: Prezza was a binge-eater; fish and chips, Chinese takeaways, digestive biscuits. Hunter Davies, his ghost-writing co-author, needed a killer fact and up pops bulimia. Never dull, that John Prescott.
