Blair and Brown pay tribute to one of a kind’ Prescott

Former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown yesterday paid tribute to John Prescott as the former deputy prime minister was buried.

- DAVE HIGGENS

Senior figures from past and current Labour governments gathered at Hull Minster to remember the veteran politician who died in November aged 86.

The funeral cortege included a Jaguar hearse and limousine, in a nod to Prescott’s nickname “two Jags”, and Sir Tony and Mr Brown joked in their eulogies about the famous incident in the 2001 general election campaign when he punched a man who threw an egg at him.

Prescott’s coffin was carried into the minster as former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell played the Welsh national anthem on the bagpipes.

Mr Brown paid tribute to Prescott as a “working class hero” who “kept the show on the road during difficult times”.

Giving the first eulogy at the service, he said: “We will never see his like again. A man of the people he certainly was, in a class by himself, a one-off. One of a kind but one of us, in the best sense of the word.

“Unique, remarkable, extraordinary. John Lennon would have called him a working class hero, and not least because he risked appearing on Gavin And Stacey, seen by millions, as Nessa’s rejected suitor.