Press

24dash.com
02 February 2007
by Ian Morgan
Source

TV drama portrays Prescott as Carry On-style sex maniac

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott faces fresh humiliation in a new TV drama which portrays him as a Carry On-style sex maniac.

ITV1’s Confessions Of A Diary Secretary is a comic take on Prescott’s affair with Tracey Temple.

He is shown having sex with Temple in his flat, his office and his official country pile Dorneywood - all without removing his socks.

Prescott - played by Early Doors actor John Henshaw - woos Temple by approaching her at a Whitehall Christmas party with the line: “I bet those nipples are fantastic when they’re erect.”

And when he spies her making a bacon sandwich, he asks her: “Are you all right with bacon or would you like a sausage?”

After lusting over Temple wearing red leather trousers to the office, Prescott invites her back to his Admiralty House grace-and-favour apartment because he has some diary entries he wants to “slot in”.

“You said you had something you wanted me to slot in? Is it a big thing or a little thing?” Temple asks.

“Well, why don’t you take a look for yourself? I’m sure you’d be able to accommodate it,” a leering Prescott replies before consummating the affair.

At one point during their steamy relationship, Temple (Shameless star Maxine Peake) tells him to pep up their sex life by taking Viagra.

“You expect me to score Viagra at this time of night? Who do you suggest I ring?” he asks.

“Blunkett?” suggests Temple.

The drama, to be aired on February 28, is based on Temple’s diaries and an interview she gave to a Sunday newspaper.

It shows Prescott lying to loyal wife Pauline, who is hundreds of miles away at their constituency home in Hull.

On one occasion she calls the London flat while Prescott is in bed after a sex session and Temple is putting her clothes on.

“I’m just about to turn in for the night,” he tells Pauline.

“I’m shagged out, to tell you the truth.”

Prescott tells Temple he loves his wife.

“So why are we doing this?” she asks.

Prescott replies: “Sex. Good, clean, uncomplicated sex.”

Their affair ended when Temple’s boyfriend discovered her diaries and went to a newspaper.

Throughout the drama, she is portrayed as a woman with delusions of grandeur.

When Tony Blair leaves the country for a trip to Asia, leaving Prescott in charge, she muses: “I suppose that means I’m having sexual relations with the Prime Minister. I’m like the British Monica Lewinsky. Only thinner.”

Prescott is not the only politician sent up in the drama.

One scene features Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown - played by Tony Slattery and Damian Lewis in comic cameos.

Prescott invites them round to his flat for a shepherd’s pie dinner, with Temple acting as waitress, in a bid to make them settle their differences.

But Blair and Prescott end up having a bitter argument over whether or not ketchup can be called ‘red sauce’.

At the end of the meal, they argue again when Blair says he will leave the flat in a few minutes.

“How can I be sure you’ll go when you say you will?” snipes Brown.

“You know, Gordon, these jokes are just tiring after a while,” sighs Blair.

Henshaw, 55, said he relished the role of Prescott.

“He’s a larger-than-life character. I’ve got a bit of feeling for Prescott. He says what he means, when he’s annoyed you can see he’s annoyed. I used to be a bin man and I was a shop steward back in the day so we have that in common,” he said.

But of Prescott’s affair, he said: “As a married man myself for 30-odd years, I think it’s the lowest of the low that any man can do to his wife. It was an awful thing, it was callous. I felt sorry for Pauline.”

The actor got himself in shape for the role by eating a lot.

“I allowed myself the odd toasted tea cake. I’ve been eating since last January to bulk up for this role.”

Asked what Prescott will think of his portrayal, Henshaw shrugged: “I don’t give a toss.”

Peake, 32, who recently played Moors Murderer Myra Hindley in ITV1 drama See No Evil, said she would never have considered an affair with the Deputy PM.

“Not if he was the last man on earth,” she said.

Scriptwriter Tony Basgallop said the drama was intended as a dollop of “light-hearted sauce”.

“We wanted to do something that was quite racy and funny, and that’s definitely what we delivered.

“It’s the Government with their pants down,” he said.