John Prescott saved my life has a funny ring to it. And he didn't exactly rescue Josie Hall, but when a television company found the 17-year-old on Facebook and drove the former deputy prime minister to her home in south-east London, something definitely changed.
As anyone who watched the first episode of Prescott: The Class System and Me knows, Josie and John hit it off. At first they bonded over smacking people. Josie liked a fight and only knew Prescott for lamping a voter. Then they agreed on Cherie Blair: Josie asked whether he liked Cherie. "No," he admitted. "I don't either," she nodded. "She's stuck up."
Alongside Pauline Prescott, Josie was the star of the BBC documentary: funny, feisty and, to many middle-class viewers, the authentic voice of the working class (except that when Prescott told her she was working class she quipped, "but I don't work"). Closer to home, however, viewers were less impressed. "My mum thought I was drunk. My grandad thought I was common. He's from Kent," says Josie, when we meet at the Soho offices of the documentary-makers. "I thought I looked like such a mug, such a little rat. Tiny as well. I looked like some little 10-year-old trying to act hard on telly. Everyone said I looked like a little joker."
Usually, that is how it ends. Cameras in tow, a politician sweeps in and out and then people like Josie get ribbed by their mates for being on the telly. Unusually, however, several months after the cameras stopped rolling, Prescott has stuck around and Josie's life is really changing.
She was on the phone to Prescott yesterday and the day before. He was encouraging her about a new job. "I've just got so much respect for him, I wouldn't let no one say a bad thing about him," she says. "Everyone said he won't shut up when you talk to him, but I didn't shut up. I never used to be able to talk to people because my self-confidence was low. I clicked with him as soon as I met him, that's why it was easy to talk to him."
The feeling is mutual. Prescott told the cameras Josie was "delightful" and noted she was "not blaming the world" for her problems. He was right. Rather than turn her difficult upbringing into a sob story, Josie seems extraordinarily determined to take responsibility - more than she should, probably - for her own life.
Her dad was "a face" in south London - not a gangster, just respected and feared - but she never knew him. He died of a heroin overdose. "I lived with my mum until I was 18 months old and then she turned into a druggie," she says. So she grew up with her auntie and uncle, who she calls mum and dad, in "blue borough" - Lewisham, where the rubbish bins are blue (Greenwich is "green borough" because of its green bins; black-binned Southwark is "black borough"). "My mum, she ain't my mum because obviously it takes a lot to be a mother. My mum is who I live with," she says. "If I'd known my dad I would've probably called him by his name, and if I'd bonded with him I would've called him dad, but I never knew him. So I've got my mum and my dad and that's all I need."
She started getting into trouble at school because "no one wants to be the school geek". She would wear a short skirt or put on odd shoes that didn't match, "just being rude to fit in," she says. "In the end, that's how I turned out." She locked the "smelly" French teacher in the cupboard, got into fights with other girls ("with me you either hate me or you like me") and the deputy head started sending her home. She was expelled from school aged 15 when she was called to the deputy head's office and mistakenly believed he was going to hit her. "He said, 'That's it, we're getting this finished once and for all.' I always remember it. He slammed the door and just came storming at me and, because he was massive, I started panicking and just laid into him." She ran off and was told not to come back. So she didn't.
Did no one take her under their wing? "No," she says quietly. "Maybe if they did, I wouldn't want to, because I wouldn't want to be thingy-bobbed" - she means patronised - "but I wish I had gone back to school and done everything because I'm suffering for it now and I will for the rest of my life."
She found work as a hairdresser but then broke her leg "in a riot". A fight with two girls ended up with her and her friend Ella taking on the girls' parents and sisters. When a man grabbed a knife, she fell over a wall. "I've come down on my leg funny and this big man is chasing me with a knife and I'm trying to run." She giggles. "I'm fighting and I've got a broken leg and some mad man is chasing me with a knife. I think it's funny."
She says she gets her temper from her biological parents and perhaps a bit from growing up in a rough area. Did Prescott see some of himself in her? "If I'm like him when I'm older I'll make myself laugh because he's a character. I clicked with his son as well and obviously dad and son have got a lot in common. So I reckon he was like me when he was younger, a little troublemaker." She also shares Prescott's republican tendencies. The Queen "thinks her shit don't stink", she says. "I'd start a revolution if I had my way."
When she first met Prescott she had been unemployed since breaking her leg (it still hurts; she ripped the cast off after five weeks because she wanted to wear a party dress and now she "runs like a penguin"). So when the cameras stopped rolling, Prescott arranged an appointment at the jobcentre. Two weeks ago, she started working in a clothes shop in Bromley.
Before Prescott's intervention, she reckons her confidence was already rising thanks to her boyfriend of three years. He's "nearly 23", a grime musician who, she grins, also works in a bank. In the documentary, Prescott repeatedly ponders his own lack of confidence - he still can't walk into a restaurant on his own; Pauline has to go first - which he believes he would have overcome if he had been blessed with a middle- or upper-class upbringing.
Prescott argues that social mobility in Britain is still skewed by those born into privilege, who can purchase an expensive education that virtually guarantees them access to influential networks and a good job. To be fair, Josie hasn't had many chances. "I haven't but maybe that's my own fault. It's not my mum's fault because she tried explaining to me whenever I was bad I would get punished. I wouldn't blame it on my family. I think it's my fault. Everyone blames the parents."
Josie says she now lives quietly and just sees her boyfriend when she comes home from work. She is trying to avoid fights but still has family problems. "I don't want to go to prison because I'm on my final warning but I wouldn't let anyone try and mug me off," she says. She worries about her temper. "I haven't had a row for ages but because I've got bare stress inside me, when I flip I'm gonna go mad."
So it is not quite a case of John Prescott saved my life. But "he made me see a little bit of bright side", she says in a small voice. "After that, I did not stop trying to get a job. He was a big help." She has been invited to lunch with John and Pauline, who she hasn't met yet. "I just said I wanted her eyelashes."
Josie trusts "about two people" in her life "because I don't trust myself. If I don't trust myself, why can I trust anyone else?" I hope her new contacts in politics and the media are trustworthy. I hope someone gives her a chance. But maybe that's just patronising. She may be fine without any of us. "I've had to bring myself up on my own. I don't depend on anyone," she says, matter-of-factly. "I don't like depending on people so I'm going to see how I do on my own. I have done for the last 17 years" ·