Aging & Wisdom Quote by John Prescott

John Prescott’s line lands because it weaponizes the gap between who we expect to be “ill” and who actually is. He opens with the hazy bureaucracy of public life - “a fact-finding mission” - the kind of phrase that clings to politicians like lint. Then he pivots to the body: “a man of my age and build.” It’s a blunt acknowledgment that his physical presence, and the cultural shorthand attached to it, should have disqualified him from suspicion. That’s the joke, and it’s also the indictment.

The subtext is about visibility and disbelief. Bulimia nervosa is routinely coded as young, female, image-obsessed; Prescott is older, male, and publicly read as solid, even stubbornly ordinary. He doesn’t just confess to a diagnosis; he dramatizes the moment of misrecognition, suggesting that others were busy parsing his travel as political theater while missing the private crisis. “Never for one moment thinking” isn’t just about colleagues. It’s about a society that treats eating disorders as a niche pathology rather than a human one.

Context matters: a prominent Labour politician admitting to bulimia punctures the stiff-upper-lip model of masculinity that still props up British public life. The last clause - “but that’s what the consultant said I had” - adds a strategically defensive note, as if outsourcing the truth to medical authority makes it safer to say aloud. It’s self-deprecating, yes, but it also forces a recalibration of empathy: the punchline leaves you holding the seriousness.