The Second Space

After Mr Prescott's admission that he has been secretly battling with the eating disorder throughout his political career, it emerged that he had confided in Alastair Campbell about the problem years before Labour was elected.

	Mr Prescott hid his illness even from his wife

Mr Prescott, then opposition spokesman for employment, told Mr Campbell in 1993 during a dinner with Mr Campbell's editor at the Daily Mirror, David Banks.

Mr Banks decided to suppress the story and Mr Campbell, who became the Labour government's chief spin doctor, claimed never to have spoken about it again with Mr Blair or anyone else.

But critics demanded to know whether senior government colleagues were informed given that Mr Prescott was in charge of the country when Mr Blair was abroad.

Mark Wallace, the campaign director for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said he should have disclosed his condition, especially as he had claimed £4,000 in food expenses a year.

A spokesman for Tony Blair said last night that the former prime minister would not comment because it was a private matter.

Mr Campbell said: "It was not something that came up when I was working with Tony. It vaguely rings a bell but to be honest I forgot all about it until recently."

Mr Prescott said he kept the condition secret for years before even close friends and family found out.

He said eating became his "main pleasure" and that at times of stress he would seek comfort in gorging on vast quantities of food and then vomiting to purge his body.

Mr Prescott, 69, said up until a year ago he would "stuff his face" with digestive biscuits, trifles and fish and chips - and wash it down with condensed milk. When the pressure really got to him, he would drink bottles of vodka.

On trips to his local Chinese restaurant, the China Palace in his Hull constituency, he said he could eat his way through the entire menu.

Despite a series of revelations about his private life while he was in the Cabinet, he managed to keep the illness secret from all but his closest friends and family and the doctors from whom he sought help.

But, as he admits, he is not an obvious candidate for the disease.

"People normally associate it with anorexic girls, models trying to keep their weight down," he writes in his autobiography, Prezza, Pulling No Punches.

"With my weight, people wouldn't suspect it. I wasn't a very successful bulimic, in that my weight didn't really drop."