Union hardman Prescott denounces threat of strike before staging his own walkout

Only Prescott could manage to make a humble greeting sound like a death threat. But when the Deputy Prime Minister growled "good mornin'" at a Downing Street press briefing yesterday, it was clear we were in for a typically, er, combative performance.

Having been variously dubbed "Two Jags", "Two Jabs" and "John of Jaunt" by Her Majesty's press in recent years, Mr Prescott is not, even in his kindest moods, a man predisposed to journalists. It is safe to say that he believes lobby journalists are the lowest media lifeform of all.

So it was unsurprising that a certain static hung in the air as he made his first appearance at the new-style press conference at the Foreign Press Association building in St James'. A scowl on legs, Mr Prescott glowered his way through a statement on the threatened national firefighters' strike. Looking uncannily like Les Dawson without the gags, he said that the Fire Brigades' Union demands for a 40 per cent pay rise was "not fairness, it's fantasy".

In his youth, the Deputy Prime Minister was, famously, one of the "tightly knit group of politically motivated men" attacked by Harold Wilson for their role in the national seamen's strike in the 1960s.

These days, Mr Prescott's only connection with a lunatic fringe is his own unruly haircut, but one TV journalist could not resist recalling his past glories on the picket line.

Mr Prescott was unabashed. "As a former trade unionist, I used to go on strike to get a review. They don't need to go on strike, they've got a review," he said.

But the man from The Sun pointed out that his anti-strike message to the firemen sounded like a kettle making racist remarks to a pot, saying: "You half joked about the fact that you used to strike yourself." Mr Prescott interrupted: "It wasn't a half-joke, it was a statement of fact."

When the briefing was brought to an early close, one reporter complained loudly that Tony Blair normally allowed press conferences to go on as long as there were questions to be asked. "Is that not going to apply to the Deputy Prime Minister?" he asked.

Mr Prescott replied: "No. I've got different rules. Cheerio!" And with that the Government's 24-carat union hardman staged his very own one-man walkout.