The secret feud of Labour's last working-class heroes

John Prescott has finally blurted out what we always suspected: he did not like Cherie Blair. They were, after all, chalk and cheese, despite each having a northern working class background. She was a brilliant student who went straight on to be a highly-paid London barrister; he failed his11-Plus, worked as a waiter, and fought his way into politics through the unions.

But only now, after more than a decade as Tony Blair's loyal deputy, in opposition and government, has Prescott allowed the antipathy to surface.

"We never got close to the Blairs," he says in a new BBC2 programme called Prescott: The Class System And Me to be broadcast on 27 October. He adds: "It just didn't happen. We were not their set; certainly we were not her set."

He also admits to badgering Tony Blair for an invitation to Chequers. "I did say to Tony once, 'Surely you must have state dinners there? Pauline would like to come to a state dinner'."

But his plea was in vain. Prescott says in the programme he assumes the reason must be that "she [Cherie] did the list", because "despite what Cherie might say about her class background there weren't many of them [working class people] going to Chequers anyway". Mr Prescott is also filmed eating fish and chips and having a chat with three unemployed young women on a south London council estate, during which he confesses that he does not know the meaning of the word "chav".

One girl asks: "Do you like Tony Blair?" Prescott replies: "I worked with him for 10 years." But when asked if he liked Mrs Blair, he says "No" and, asked if he is worried about Mrs Blair's autobiography coming out at the same time as his, he quips: "It might send me to sleep but it's not keeping me awake."

And he recounts a conversation he had with the PM's office before a meal with the Blairs and the Browns. He says Blair's office said they would not be dressing for dinner but wearing chinos. "What the hell are chinos? Pauline was told she could dress casual but my wife has never dressed casual in her life," he says in the documentary.

Eamon Hardy, the BBC's executive producer, said the programme was filmed over six months earlier this year, after film makers spent three months persuading him to include his wife.

Prescott reveals his personal insecurities, confessing he is "a bag of no confidence, whatever people say, unless I'm in battle", an attitude he believes stems from his working-class roots. He points the camera towards a picture in the House of Commons in which he believes he was airbrushed out of the front bench. He says "it's still a pyramid society" with "toffs at the top".

He is filmed in a war of words with the middle and upper classes, at the Henley Regatta and at dinner with a hereditary peer, Lord Michael Onslow. The Old Etonian told The Independent: "He is totally obsessed with class in a rather silly way – a real character flaw. I said to Mr Prescott: 'You don't have a chip on your shoulder, you have the Alps. You became the Queen's Second Minister, so why are you worrying about failing the 11-Plus so long ago?' "

Despite his insisting that he is thoroughly working class, the intimate film shows Mr Prescott being chauffeur-driven and playing croquet on the lawn of his huge grace-and-favour mansion, Dorneywood. "I have a middle-class lifestyle, there's no doubt," he said.

The 11-Plus success

Cherie Blair

Born: 1954 Bury, Lancashire. Daughter of actor Tony Booth.

Education: Passed 11-Plus, got four As at A Level, 1st in Law from the London School of Economics.

Career: Trained as a barrister, first practising in 1976 and became a QC in 1995. Unsuccessfully sought seat of North Thanet for Labour in 1983, while her husband won Sedgefield.

The 11-Plus failure

John Prescott

Born: 1938, Prestatyn, Wales. Son of a railway signalman.

Education: Failed the 11-Plus exam; left school aged 15.

Career: Joined Labour Party in 1956 after serving as a waiter, chef, and steward in the Merchant Navy. Elected MP for Hull East in 1970. Deputy Leader of Labour 1994; Deputy PM from 1997 onwards.

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