Putting the boot in to Prescott

It’s always dangerous to pick fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel.  The relationship between John Prescott and the Parliamentary sketchwriters was even more strained than that between John Prescott and the English language – and even now the silly old bastard’s been booted upstairs to the House of Lords there are no signs that it is abating.

 

For a sketch to be truly nasty to someone, it should really combine a dose of out-and-out rudeness, a generous helping of kicking-your-man-when-he’s-down, and a topping of thinly veiled threat of further exposure.  This by Simon Carr is pretty much perfect.  He has a big, fat target (more than one in fact) to aim at, but it’s hard to deny that he gets the bulls-eye.  You have the rudeness:

 

Thus yesterday, to the House of Lords to see the butt-crack, the builder's bum of the Labour Party, being dignified, elevated, made noble. We all sucked our teeth and said, "Ooh! Big job, that."

 

…It was a shock, actually, to be reminded of him: proud, scowling, resentful, vengeful, partisan, with a big pork belly, and a mind like a bucket of bait.  It's a very odd business politics – how could a man like that have been Deputy Prime Minister of Britain for so many years?

 

The booting of a prone opponent:

 

One happy memory: he'd been having sex with one of his staff members – once at tea-time behind the open door of his office. Our dashing Don Juan couldn't keep it together and the woman later went to the papers with the news that the Deputy PM had "a penis the size of a cocktail sausage".

 

And a little sting in the tail to remind his target that not quite everything came out about his behaviour in office (or indeed in offices):

 

He may have, hold, possess all the rights, privileges, advantages that are due to a Baron's natural right. And, as these things go in threes, heaven knows what Maisie, Tracy and Casey, what Posy, Rosy and Josy, that dignity, title and honour entails.

 

One in the public sphere, the other one not.  The links are mine, but the satisfaction is all Carr’s.