Blair's Deputy PM Reveals Bulimia Battle

Prescott links illness to heavy stress; urges sufferers to seek help
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 21, 2008 3:15 AM CDT
Blair's Deputy PM Reveals Bulimia Battle
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, center, smiles alongside his successor Gordon Brown, right, and outgoing Deputy PM John Prescott in London's House of Commons in this TV image June 27, 2007.   (AP Photo/PA)

After publicizing his own stunning battle with bulimia yesterday, former British deputy prime minister John Prescott toured TV stations urging fellow sufferers to get help, reports the Times of London. “Do take advice, it can help you out of a lot of misery,” Prescott, 69, said in a BBC interview. The Labor leader details his condition in his soon-to-be-published memoirs.

In the book, Prescott links his condition to the heavy stress of his job. “The only break I ever took was to eat. It became my main pleasure,” he writes. He would eat “any old rubbish— burgers, chocolate, crisps, fish and chips—loads of it, till I felt sick. Then there would be a weird kind of pleasure in vomiting.” A psychologist called his disclosure “hugely brave.” (More bulimia stories.)

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