Prescott blogs back over diaries

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk_politics/7906384.stm

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John Prescott has got his own back on his former minister, Chris Mullin, whose diaries tagged his old office as the "Department of Folding Deckchairs".

In his blog the ex-deputy PM suggested Mr Mullin was once mistaken for a tramp while trying to enter the office.

"I turned round to security and had to tell them: That's no tramp, that's my junior minister Chris Mullin," he said.

Mr Mullin had said his old boss wore shoes that did not match and ministers' main role was to laugh at his jokes.

In extracts from his diaries, published in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Mullin - who was a junior minister at the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions between 1999 and 2001 - said he grew to like and admire Mr Prescott.

But in one section, he remembered his boss turning up for work wearing shoes that did not match: "We are permitted a brief giggle at this. Towards the end of the meeting a minion reappears with a plastic bag containing an assortment of shoes."

He added: "His idea of conferring is to lie slumped in an armchair and deliver, at breakneck speed, a series of diatribes on whatever has hit him on the way into work in the morning.

"Our main role is to laugh sycophantically at his jokes. This is how it must be at the court of Boris Yeltsin."

In his blog on the "Go fourth" website, Mr Prescott wrote he was looking forward to reading Mr Mullins' diary and said he had been an "excellent minister".

"But yes, I must admit, in my rush to get to work I would occasionally put on the wrong shoes. Mind you, I didn't think my jokes were that bad, Chris! Perhaps it's the way I tell 'em," he wrote.

But he wondered whether the case of mistaken identity got a mention - explaining he had been told there was a "tramp" at the front of the building - only to turn up to find Mr Mullin "dressed in a thick overcoat, scarf, gloves and a woolly Russian cap that covered his face and ears".