Just when you thought it was safe to come out, here he is again. Still on Radio Four but in a surprising new guise; not performing but acting. On Sunday afternoon, John Prescott, MP, took a leading role as ‘The Policeman’ in the Classic Serial. Or rather he gave us nine economical lines in a very wordy dramatisation of Robert Tressell’s 1914 campaigning novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. But they were nine rather good lines. Prezzie’s got a natural radio voice. Clear, with a naturally high decibel level. He never has to force it. He also didn’t have to put on the regional accent demanded of his part. I would almost say they were the best nine lines in the hour-long drama. Said with purpose and from an actor truly inhabiting his part: ‘What you say may be all right or it may not…’
It was strange to hear a group of house builders and decorators bemoaning their lot, as if they were the underdogs. Stranger still when all they seemed to do was sit around and drink cups of tea. Tressell’s book was based on his experiences as an underpaid and overworked painter and decorator in Hastings in the early 20th century. He was appalled not just by the way that he and his fellow workers were treated by their greedy and unscrupulous bosses, who were fiddling figures, scrooging wages, in cahoots with the local council. He was also shocked by the way that his fellow workers virtually connived in the exploitation by their inability to unite against a common enemy. Tressell died, from TB, before his book was published (he took an adopted pen name from the ‘trestle’ tables on which he rolled out wallpaper, his real name was Noonan).
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