In the village of Sutton, which John Prescott called home, everybody has their own anecdote about the Labour heavyweight. For some, it was simply that they had seen him walking his dog, or out and about in his slippers, but others had more colourful stories to tell.
At Dresu, a women’s clothes shop, the co-owner Michelle Auker remembers police swarming the village when Greenpeace protesters scaled the roof of Prescott’s family home; her colleague Sam Waud recalls his wife, Pauline, ordering him “naughty” birthday cakes – in the shape of “boobs and stuff” – from Skelton’s cake shop in Hull. Many here will tell you his favourite restaurant was Mr Chu’s on St Andrew’s Quay in Hull, or that he was never absent from the remembrance service in the village.
Colin Foulston, 87, enjoying a pint with a friend in the Duke of York pub, said that despite his larger-than-life character, Prescott was quite a private man, and wasn’t often seen out drinking in the village. However, the two men had children in the same year at school, and Foulston recalls “Mrs Prescott turning up in her togs to the PTA meetings”. Whether you were a fan of the village’s most famous resident, he said, “depends on whether you vote Labour or not”.
At Sutton Fisheries, Jenny and Yong Chen knew the ex-MP well – he would regularly come in for fish, chips and a can of Coke. He would walk down about once a week, and sit down to eat outside, Jenny said, usually by himself, and always ordering the same meal. As Prescott got older and more infirm, her husband, Yong, saw him pull up in a taxi instead, even though the shop was just a few hundred yards from his house. “I said, you can just ring us and I’ll deliver.’ From then on they would get regular calls from Prescott, always requesting his usual. “Sometimes he’d forget to unlock the gates,” Yong said, laughing, “and I’d be leaning over, trying to ring the bell.”
“We’re sorry to hear the news,” Jenny said. “He was a nice man, a very kind man.” At CJ Hairdressing in Sutton, Ann Bullen, 88, is having her hair done. “I once had need to go to him for something, and it was done immediately,” she said. “He didn’t know me but he was very good, it was done very well, he was one for his own.”
“He was a nice fella, I had a lot of respect for him,” said Glenn Jackson, 68, waiting in the hairdressers. He recalled a village summer fair when Prescott was asked to draw the raffle and award the grand prize of a giant teddy bear. Jackson was standing close to the front, and heard Prescott look at the number and say, ‘bloody hell, it’s me”. He then announced that he had won, to shouts of “it’s a fix!” from the crowd, but then said: “I’m going to present it to this young man here,” handing the prize to Jackson, who was there with his baby daughter Hannah – now 28. “We walked home with the teddy,” Jackson said. “I’ll always remember him for that.” While people’s views of Prescott may to some degree depend on their politics, most here will agree that their former MP, who was originally from Wales, cared deeply about his adopted home town of Hull, and the people who live here.
“He said all he’d be remembered for was punching that guy,” said Carole Vine, 77, waiting at a bus stop near St James’s church, where Prescott was always seen at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. But she recalls much more about the former deputy prime minister. “He bought a lot of property very, very cheap,” she said, but she still believed he was a “champion of the working-class people”, adding: “He had good points and bad points.” “He got in a taxi and the driver was a coach for a young lads’ football team,” she said. “He told him the clubhouse had been broken into and [Prescott] took out his wallet, said, ‘that’s all I’ve got on me,’ and gave him £200.” “I liked it when he punched that fella for throwing that egg on his head, I thought, good on him,” said Sarah Jeffery, 48, enjoying a birthday drink in the Duke of York pub. “I liked him,” she said. “He was funny, he was a proper Hully. He moved to Hull, but he had a Hull accent, and you could tell he was for us.”