Former UK Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott has died aged 86, having battled Alzheimer's.
"John spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment, doing so from his time as a waiter on the cruise liners to becoming Britain's longest-serving Deputy Prime Minister," his family said.
Born in Wales, the son of a railwayman, he left school aged 15 and worked as a trainee chef and a steward on board a cruise ship before entering politics in a career that spanned five decades. He also went on to graduate from Ruskin College and the University of Hull.
Known as a politician who pulled no punches, Prescott sat on Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet before becoming Tony Blair's deputy, and the most powerful spokesman for the working class at the time. He was deputy prime minister between 1997-2007.
"He was one of the most talented people I ever encountered in politics, who could talk in the bluntest and sometimes bluest language," Blair said on Thursday.
In 2002, when he was about to hold a meeting with former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, the UK Foreign Office warned Prescott: “Don’t touch that man!,” according to a book written by two of Mr Mintoff’s lifelong friends: former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and former Dockyards chairman Sammy Meilaq.
Mintoff met Prescott in London together with Mifsud Bonnici as part of a series of meetings to raise awareness about Malta’s concerns on neutrality as it prepared to join the EU.
When he shook hands with Mintoff, he remarked: “Dom, do you know what the Foreign Office told me when I asked about the state of relations between the UK and Malta and that I was about to meet you? They said ‘Don’t touch that man!’ But I told them ‘How can I refuse him, he’s such an old friend of mine."
Prescott was made a member of the House of Lords but suffered a stroke in 2009.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Lord Prescott was a "true giant of the Labour movement" and one of the "key architects" of the last Labour government.