Interview: Pauline Prescott, author and politician's wife

• Pauline Prescott, photographed by Graham Jepson

THERE is something rather magnificent about Pauline Prescott, in the way a ship in full sail, flags billowing, horn sounding, is magnificent.

She does not do minimalist. The eyes shimmer with metallic colours, the mouth explodes in an exaggerated cupid's bow of hot pink. Most mesmerising of all are the eyelashes (if they are real they must be declared one of the wonders of the modern world) that hang tremulously from her lower lids like spiders on trapezes. Married to former deputy prime minister John, she was the Joan Collins of political wives, though sniffier commentators have suggested she was more Bet Lynch. (A bit unfair. By the time Pauline donned Bet's leopard print, it was the hottest of fashion trends.) "I think they're just being snobby," she says, when asked if that stuff hurts. We're having tea at her publisher's office, though her favourite tipple is actually champagne, which she has no difficulty reconciling with her working-class roots. "Remember," she says, "nothing's too good for the workers."

'Magnificent' was also the general consensus about the way, in 2006, Pauline handled news of her brusque, firebrand husband's two-year affair with his secretary. Rude as it is to make personal remarks, perhaps we could suspend standing orders on the normal rules of good manners just for a moment. The trim Mrs Prescott, in her classy black jacket and trousers, pearl necklace and earrings, looks frankly unbelievable for her 71 years. So does Mr Prescott, but for rather different reasons. His infidelity attracted incredulity; it was like Shrek cheating on Princess Fiona. Pauline retained her silence and her dignity, privately telling the errant John to sling his hook, while she directed workmen installing her new loo and made smoked salmon sandwiches with the crusts cut off, because standards had to be maintained.

For the first time, she is talking about that period, having written her autobiography, Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking. But it would really be back to front to start with the affair. In her late 60s, Pauline Prescott had to confront the cruel truth that her life was not quite what it seemed, but her actions and reactions then were influenced by a lifetime's experiences that had built, piece by colourful piece, the mosaic of her personality. "Nothing could be worse than what I faced at the beginning of my life," she says. When the writer Hunter Davies worked on John's autobiography, he discussed his material with his wife. It's very interesting, she told him. But the book you really want to get is Pauline's.

The security of Pauline Prescott's childhood ended abruptly with the death of her father when she was only 14. She was terrified of the open coffin sitting on the trestle table, white gauze covering her father's face, and she edged round the room clinging to the walls, eyes averted. Until then, the big thing in her life had been her dancing classes; she learned tap and also travelled round the country doing Morris dancing. That all disappeared after her father died, as things became financially precarious for her mother, bringing up Pauline and her older brother Peter alone.

Life turned upside-down. Peter contracted tuberculosis and was in a sanatorium for 18 months. Her mother, Rene, suffered a serious industrial accident when her left hand was enclosed in heavy ironing machinery, burning her fingers to the bone and welding her rings to the flesh. She would later receive compensation, but for a time, with both her and Peter in hospital, 15-year-old Pauline was left to fend for herself. It's the loneliness she remembers.

"Quaintways" in Chester sounds like the perfect backdrop for a sitcom. Pauline Tilston, or Tilly, as she was then, worked in the hairdressing salon. The salon was part of a department store and leisure complex that included a restaurant and club. The Quaintways girls set one another up with blind dates from the local American air base, and Pauline was teamed with a good-looking 21-year-old she calls Jim. If Jim was a catch, so too was Pauline. Photographs of her show a dark-haired, doe-eyed beauty with fine features and porcelain skin. She was still 15 when she first met Jim, and during the next six months she became obsessed with the handsome American who told her he was going to marry her. What he didn't tell her was that he'd need to divorce his wife back home first.

It was Pauline's mother who discovered the truth from someone at the air base. Pauline was devastated, but Jim, who also had a baby daughter, still insisted they would marry. Then, when it was discovered that Pauline was pregnant, Jim was immediately sent home. Pauline never heard from him again. Despite the more censorious times, the Quaintways family gathered round their teenage mother-to-be. The manager called her in and told the weeping teenager that they would all look after her. The chefs sent her bowls of soup. She was so young that her vulnerability seemed to touch them.

Pauline adored her mother, who lived until she was 92 and only died in 2005. Rene was always there for her. But what she could not offer was a home for her daughter's baby. Pauline went to St Bridget's House of Mercy, a home for unmarried mothers, desperately hoping a solution would be found. But when her son Paul was born, Rene was still adamant. It could have sparked bitterness but Pauline never resented her decision. "Never. I adored her. She worked at a laundry and when she came to see me I could see she was exhausted. It sounds all hearts and flowers this, but it happened."

Despite Paul being placed in a nursery 80 miles away, Pauline refused to sign adoption papers for three years. She visited when she could, holding on to her dream of looking after him until the nursery said he was too old to stay. One of her final visits before she signed his adoption papers was with her new boyfriend, a young steward on the Cunard and White Star shipping lines: John Prescott. Prescott was kind to her young son, despite facing disapproval from his own mother, and he never, ever asked about her relationship with Jim.

But Pauline is equable, John volatile. What attracted her to him? "Well you've seen him when he was younger, haven't you?" she says. "He was pretty dishy, handsome. He was a lot of fun. He went away to sea and of course he had loads of money… this sounds awful… but he would spoil you. He was always surprising me with lovely gifts and taking me out. He knew how to treat you. He was always very generous."

But she also admits that along with John came "an inner insecurity and dark moods that I wasn't sure I could spend the rest of my life dealing with". Yet she did. "I did," she admits, "and they still get difficult but I don't tolerate them as much now and he is mellowing. John blows up but he doesn't bear a grudge. He can go upstairs in one mood and come down in another. I'll let him do all his stuff and then, when things are calmer, I'll say, 'Hang on…' I just wait until the right time."

• The Prescotts on their wedding day, 1961

By the time they married, Paul had been adopted. They went on to have their own two boys, Jonathan and David, but every 2 January, Paul's birthday, Pauline would withdraw into herself and remember her first little boy. "What I did was for entirely the right reasons, but at the end of the day you still give your child away, and that guilt is always there with you." She never told a soul. "It wasn't that I was ashamed but I just locked it in the back of my head. I couldn't cope with telling the boys. I thought maybe there would come a time in my life when I would sit them down and tell them, but John thought there wasn't any need."

She once met actress Joan Collins and told her that she was glued to Dynasty when Collins' character was reunited with her son Adam. "I used to think, oh, I wish that could happen to me." She knew that the law allowed Paul to look for her, and when he never did she secretly feared he was dead. Then she assumed he didn't need her. She did once see a story about a young man called Paul who had a heart transplant and lived in the Wolverhampton area, where her son had gone. "He had a little cleft in his chin. I thought, that could be my Paul. I said to John, just inquire about that. I think he thought it was me grasping at straws."

In the end, the media uncovered the story and tracked Paul down. His adopted father had died by this time but his elderly mother was still alive. "He wanted to wait until maybe his parents had passed on but when the media found me he had to tell his mother," explains Pauline.

When Paul was a baby, Pauline had – naturally – been jealous of his relationship with a young nursery nurse. All those years later, she must have experienced similar pangs about the woman who had mothered Paul in her place. But she expresses only empathy, generosity and, above all, gratitude. "She was a woman in her 80s and he was her only son, so for a younger woman to come along it must have been quite traumatic for her. She was just amazing. I did tell her, 'You're his mum, you're the one who brought him up.' I said to her, 'Thank you so much for giving him such a wonderful life.' This lovely little lady said to me, 'We did our best.' We just hugged, and that was a lovely experience."

Paul also tracked down Jim in the US, and Pauline finally spoke to him on the phone. No regrets, she insists. She spoke to him for Paul's sake rather than hers. What does Paul call her? "He calls me Pauline, but when he introduces me, he says, 'This is my mother.' And cards and things are to Mum. But it must be difficult. You can't just call somebody else Mum like that." She can easily call him son, though, because he never stopped being that. Is her relationship with him different from that with her other two boys? "No, no," she says immediately. "Three boys the same. Two of them I know better but I love all three."

Sometimes the most poignant lines are the throwaway ones. Pauline's account of John arriving home one night, a day early, to warn her that newspapers were about to expose his affair, reveals her devastation. But it's the description of her wet hair, wrapped in a towel in preparation for "getting glammed up" for his homecoming, that reveals the dynamics of their relationship. Her entire life has been supportive of his. When John became an MP, she assumed she would move to London. "Listen, love," John told her, "I believe an MP should live in the constituency he represents." You mean, you believe in me living in the constituency you represent, Pauline retorted. Still, she loved bringing up their children in Hull.

She calls herself a "traditional wife", but did John's confession maybe change things? Did part of her think, right, it's my turn now? "You know, it sounds selfish, but actually, yes. With John I've always played a supportive role and thoroughly enjoyed it, but now it's all about me and I think, wow." She's more assertive. "I have always been a strong character but I have kept quiet a lot. Now I am straight out with it. I won't take any nonsense."

But writing her book was not motivated by revenge. "Oh no, no," she says, horrified. "I'm not like that. It happened. I can't pretend. But I am only sad when I think about it, not bitter. If it had been a great love affair, I don't think I could have coped with that but it wasn't… it was, you know how it was… And yes, we sort of moved on. I don't fling it back in his face, nothing like that. I don't think you should do that. But it just left me… I just wish it hadn't happened."

The affair wasn't a momentary weakness. It was prolonged deception over two years. "Yes, that was something I found quite difficult to come to terms with," she agrees. "'How could you look at me?' The deceit… But he's dreadfully ashamed, upset," she adds. Everything about her suggests a deeply kind woman; she really doesn't want people to think badly of John. Across the table, her brow furrows. "Is it a man thing that they can do that?" she says suddenly. "You know, that they can just sort of cut off? There's you in one box and… no, I couldn't do that."

Interestingly, as a child, John saw his father kiss another woman. He was so upset that he ran to the police station to report him. "Go home and don't tell your mother," the policeman said. Does Pauline think that incident important? She hesitates. "His dad was a loveable rogue, a womaniser. I don't want to make a big thing of it but it's your formative years, what goes on in your family. I don't know. I think maybe it did. I think things like that can be deep-rooted."

She had coped with emotional trauma before but this time there was no privacy. "It's dreadfully stressful but when you do it in the eyes of the media, it really is quite something." She insisted on reading everything. "I wanted to read exactly what everybody else was reading. John tends to do the ostrich thing that most men do, but you can't confront a thing unless you know what you are dealing with." But it was awful, she admits. "Low self-esteem takes over, all that sort of stuff. Then this feisty thing kicks in. It's like you get this strength. My mother was very feisty, and I think, when the chips are down and your back's to the wall, you can go one way or the other, can't you?"

There is one issue that is hard to confront. A man who spent large parts of his working life away from home has his first affair in his 60s. Is that likely? There were allegations about other women. Yes, she says, she spoke to John thoroughly about those. "But you know, when newspapers print at the bottom, 'If anyone has had an affair…' well, how can you disprove that?" Would her decision to take John back have been different if more women had been involved? "I couldn't have coped with all that. No, I couldn't. It would have meant that your whole life would have been a lie, wouldn't it? Your whole marriage would have been a lie. No, I don't think I could have coped with that."

• With Cherie Blair

It was sometimes lonely being a political wife, she admits. But she loved the perks: the flat in Admiralty House, the country residence at Dorneywood. John, though, said she wasn't invited to things by the London wives, like Cherie Blair. In fact, John admitted he didn't like Cherie much. "Oh, that was a bit naughty of him," Pauline says, vaguely disapproving. He said Pauline felt shunned. "Who said?" John. "Did he?" Yes. "Well no, no I didn't. Cherie has her life in London so we never had a close relationship, but I always admired her." But did she like her? "I did like her. Yes. She was always a very warm girl. But, ehm… yes, she had a different life to me."

Despite her Labour allegiance, she doesn't seem a deeply political person. (There has been a lot of talk about whether politicians "get" the expenses scandal, so maybe it's no surprise if some spouses don't. Pauline looks surprised when I raise a story from her book about John insisting his government car be upgraded from a Rover to a Jaguar. Nothing, after all, is too good for the workers.)

Would it have mattered if John had been a Tory? Oh no, she says. And it didn't matter that her son Paul was? Pauline laughs. "I thought it was a hoot!" She asked John to phone defence secretary Geoff Hoon about Paul when it emerged he was in the military police. Turned out he was a lieutenant colonel who had provided security for Margaret Thatcher and John Major. "John said, 'I bet he's a bloody Tory!'" she laughs. And, indeed, he was. Pauline clearly doesn't give a tuppeny tack.

She is, though, a big fan of Sarah and Gordon Brown, and thought the Prime Minister's interview with Piers Morgan was brilliant. "He's very like Al Gore. The Americans say Gore is very dour and has no personality, but I've met him a few times and he's absolutely lovely, very charismatic. What do people want? Why stage-manage them and make them do something totally out of character that comes across as false? I have a lot of respect for Gordon. I mean look at Cameron…" She draws breath.

"Gosh, you said I wasn't political. But you know what, the state we're in right now, who else would you want at the helm but someone like Gordon? On the world stage, people respect him. It's only on his territory that people don't. It's the same with John. You go to China or the States and they think John is brilliant. Over here they are always knocking and going on about his weight. I mean, for God's sake. That really does annoy me."

John retires this year, and it's also their golden wedding anniversary – an unusual time for one partner to blossom into something new. But you do get that sense with Pauline Prescott. Last year, she took part in a television documentary with John about class in Britain, and it wasn't him, but her, who got a special award for political personality of the year. "Me! I was thrilled to bits," she laughs. "Well, what a hoot."

She is more open to fresh challenges than she has ever been. "The first big milestone is 40, then 50, then 60, and you think time is flying. Now I am 71 and in nine years I'm going to be 80. I just think, wow, I'm going to go for it."r

Smile Though your Heart is Breaking, by Pauline Prescott, is published by HarperCollins (18.99)

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, March 7, 2010