'He was a proper Hully' Locals recall champion of his adopted city

Locals recall champion of his adopted city

- Hannah Al-Othman

In the village of Sutton, which John Prescott called home, everybody has their own anecdote about the Labour heavyweight. For some, it was simply that they had seen him walking his dog, or out and about in his slippers, but others had more colourful stories to tell.

At Dresu, a women's clothes shop, the co-owner, Michelle Auker, remembers police swarming the village when Greenpeace protesters scaled the roof of his home; her colleague Sam Waud recalls his wife ordering him "naughty" birthday cakes in the shape of "boobs and stuff" from Skelton's cake shop in Hull.

Many here will tell you his favourite restaurant was Mr Chu's on St Andrew's Quay, or that he was never absent from the remembrance service at the village.

Colin Foulston, 87, enjoying a pint with a friend in the Duke of York pub, says that despite his larger-than-life character, Prescott was quite a private man, and wasn't often seen out drinking in the village. However, the two men had children in the same year at school, and Foulston recalls "Mrs Prescott turning up in her togs to the PTA meetings." Whether you were a fan of the village's most famous resident, he says, "depends on whether you vote Labour or not".