Observation from the conferences: Is John Prescott on drugs?
27 Sep 2005 by Paul Davies
You really can't take John Prescott anywhere. He doesn't play well with others, be they journalists, men with eggs or leaders of the free world. For years, the top dogs at the Labour party have tried to limit the damage, but with Tony being so very busy saving poor African children from eeeevil terrorists, John gets left in charge rather more than is sensible, and then there's not a lot anyone can do. The party's proverbial leash just wasn't built for such a large animal.Party conferences are an especially tricky time of year. The Prime Minister may be around, but he doesn't much like the rest of his party, so tries to spend as little time with them as possible, and he's much more concerned about interfering with the lives of innocent men on the street than he is about interfering with his deputy.
And when John takes to the podium, as he's sadly obliged to do, Tony and co can do nothing but sit back and hope the illiterate fool can struggle his way along with the large-print autocue.
Which, the evidence from this year's foray into Brighton would suggest, he can't.
Having had enough of the complicated business of reading, Mr Prescott broke into a spontaneous rave, one which rocked the main conference hall from the top table to the locked cupboard at the back containing Peter Oborne.
In order to properly celebrate the fact that the country was dumb enough to re-elect fools like himself, Prescott urged everyone to give themselves a pat on the back and their neighbour a hearty handshake or warm embrace. No one thought he was being literal.
"Let's be bold! Let's be radical!" he bellowed. "Let's shake hands and congratulate one another! Turn left or your right [sic] and shake hands and congratulate each other!"
Unaware that he was serving only to make a tit of himself once more, he remained unabashed by the fact that the only movement was a nervous shifting that overcomes any Brit when asked to do something that could be construed as making a public scene.
"Come on! Come on!" he continued, until finally embarrassment gave way to the realisation that compliance was the quickest way to get John off the stage.
This action is the latest in a long line of frankly bizarre behaviour from a man who were he not the Deputy PM would long ago have been locked up, committed, "disappeared" by MI5 or shipped off to some gaudy celebrity fit club island somewhere near Peru. But why does he persist? What makes him quite so unfathomably deranged?
Assuming (and I admit that it's questionable) Mr Prescott is human, the answer has to be substance abuse—his behaviour just isn't natural on these or any other shores.
So what type of drug is it? What is responsible for the incoherent ramblings, the crazy ideas, the fits of rage, the general delusion, the freaky look in his eyes, the seething anger, the really stunningly weird dancing and the mid-debate narcolepsy? Actually, we can probably attribute the last one to his colleagues, but the rest stand.
I think we can rule out cocaine, it's just too trendy for a Working Class Hero like John. We can also rule out Marijuana—way too hippy for such an asinine killjoy.
Ecstasy would explain the mood changes, and the odd dancing, and it's got proper 'chav' credentials now you can buy it on the streets—or rather the shit-strewn alleyways—of Portsmouth for 50p a pop. But, however much Mr Prescott may be prone to the occasional hearty chuckle, I'm not sure you could commonly call him ecstatic, and the other symptoms are clearly habitual. Similarly with LSD—although some of his decisions may seem to be a bit rushed, John is altogether too stupid and unrealising of his actions to be thrown into random fits of panic about things that much.
PCP? "Can result in anger and rage", the label would say, were it at all legal. However, the effects of PCP are similar to the early stages of schizophrenia, which I think is just too complicated a concept for a man like John.
One much more distinct possibility is a methamphetamine, such as Ice. "It explains everything" as Hugh Laurie might say in his role as the sarky Doctor House. Heart palpitations, blurred vision and damage to the brain, lungs and liver, which hinder judgement, co-ordination, and reflexes. Not to mention the behavioural effects, which include violence, hallucinations, depression and psychosis. It looks like we have a winner.
However, if Doc Laurie has taught us anything, it's that the first solution is never right—it's so passé. So E.R.
There is another option. An alien substance might be at work. Consider this: despite extensive analysis, no one knows how Mr Prescott's wife gets her hair to become quite so hideously big; not even people who lived through the eighties. Could the two be connected? Does John habitually inhale his wife's hairspray? We have a right to know.
