Back in February 2002, seven months after a reshuffle that supposedly left John Prescott with no job, Commons tea-room chatter had it that the DPM was close to resigning. In a Rory Bremner sketch at the time, when asked to resign, a mock DPM replied that he had no job to resign from.
Fast-forward four-and-a-half years, and after a similar reshuffle, bookended by sex and croquet - John Prescott yesterday added a new weapon to the armoury of the embattled cabinet minister. What to do when the opposition calls on you to resign? Resign your house.
By giving up Dorneywood the DPM hopes to have put out one last fire. Down to one constituency house and one London apartment, he seems intent on living out the government's housing policies. As he put it during a Commons debate in 2003: "More than never, people own their own homes."
Power broker
His political legacy is chequered, but Prescott can probably lay claim to have been the chief block on Tony Blair's flirtation with a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition in 1997 and the most forceful opponent of PR.
The embodiment of a Labour machine politician, Mr Prescott also worked tirelessly behind the scenes to neuter Robin Cook's radical plans to give MPs more power over the government in the Commons.
His passionate speech to the 1993 Labour conference in which he supported John Smith's one-member-one-vote proposal helped to persuade delegates to back modernisation, and impressed the party's future leader Tony Blair.
Prescott has twice used his Admiralty House flat (with cottage pie reportedly on the menu) to broker a succession deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when their relations were at an all-time low.
"The tectonic plates appear to be moving" was how Prescott described the outcome of one meeting, suggesting that Blair should leave sooner rather than later.
Seen apparently plotting with Gordon Brown at a Scottish restaurant in 2004 he was forced to deny he was eating posh oysters, saying he'd ordered, proper working class kippers instead. The following week he infuriated Downing Street by using the word 'if' when asked whether Mr Blair would be fighting the following election.
Departments
His original title was deputy prime minister and first secretary of state for environment, transport and the regions - "the only minister with a job title bigger than his vocabulary", according to Sir Norman Fowler.
In the 2001 post-election reshuffle, Prescott gained his very own office of the deputy prime minister, albeit a smaller position within the Cabinet Office, but he lost transport and most of the environment brief.
The joined-up government of environment, transport and the regions had become a tangled mess, but he retained responsibility for his pet projects of climate change and the regions and he gained housing and planning.
Within a year, Prescott's office of the deputy prime minister became a department in its own right. Once again, the DPM was in charge of a super-portfolio befitting his party grandee status. Bashing heads together, this time Prescott was charged with filling in the cracks between local government, housing and planning.
Environment
In the glad, confident morning of 1997, the DPM's environment brief let him play a key role in the Kyoto protocol agreement on climate change.
At one stage, Prescott was even taking credit for the weather. "Under Labour," he told party members in 2000, "you'll have noticed - no water bans or hosepipe crises."
But by April 2005, Greenpeace activists were giving him and his wife a 5am alarm call at his constituency residence in Hull???
Regional assemblies
November 2004: Prescott's dream of directly elected regional assemblies was dashed when the north-east voted in a referendum 78% to 22% against his pet project.
At 2am in a lecture theatre at Sunderland university, asked by the press whether his appetite for politics was now so diminished that he might consider standing down from parliament, Prescott replied: "Naw. What would you guys do without me?"
Answering MPs questions, a few days later he explained: "I did not find the Liberals and Tories not wanting to clamber aboard that assembly, quite right, and I support them to do so..."
Housing
Prescott's biggest political legacy may turn out to be the Thames Gateway: throughout this enormous area spanning 15 local authorities, the government plans to build up to 200,000 homes in the next 20 years. As he put it in July 2004: "We will reduce and probably eliminate the homeless by 2008."
January 2005: Responding to Tory suggestions that he had leaked his sustainable communities plans to the press.
"I don't talk to the press, I can't stick 'em, quite frankly!" Gesturing angrily at the parliamentary press gallery, he barked: "Did you get that right?"
And just to clarify: "The achievements I've mentioned are within the framework, 22 billion sustainable community plan."
Transport
June 1997, and Prescott declares: "I will have failed in five years time if there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order, but I urge you to hold me to it."
May 1998: Mr Prescott, then in charge of transport, hit out at Downing Street "teenyboppers" after admitting they sent him a memo criticising his transport white paper for being too anti-car.
October 1999: He justified a 250-yard ride in a Rover to the Labour conference centre, where he made a speech asking people to use public transport, by explaining that "the wife doesn't like having her hair blown about".
July 2000: Mr Prescott issues a roads policy statement, abandoning or postponing 103 of the 140 road-building or widening schemes left over from the Conservative government.
The infamous 10-year plan published in July 2000 was the centrepiece of Mr Prescott's elusive "integrated transport policy". His plan promised £180bn of transport investment. It pumped £59bn into roads but reserved a further £60bn for the railways.
One year into the programme, the Hatfield rail crash caused a dip in passenger growth on the trains, the government's target of 25 new light rail lines by 2010 was considered by transport analysts to be overambitious and in the 2001 budget, the chancellor froze fuel duty, in effect, making car use cheaper. Prescott lost the transport brief - to Stephen Byers.
Firefighting
Prescott acted as major power broker during the firefighters strike. During the winter of 2002-03, when firefighters staged several walkouts in their dispute with the government, the DPM was again knocking heads together in his Whitehall offices. The dispute was finally resolved with firefighters agreeing to a deal that linked increased pay with a commitment to modernisation.
As Prescott put it in December 2003: the ballot of firefighters had led to "an overwhelming debate in a high turnover ballot in my favour".
Town and country
At the 2000 conference, Prescott schmoozed the faithful by lampooning the Countryside Alliance activists demonstrating at the entrance to the conference venue: "Did you see them outside with their contorted faces?" he asked them.
By April 2001 many people had forgotten what the contorted face of a countryside rights activist looked like, so Mr Prescott helpfully pointed one out to them with his fist. His jab to Craig Evans, the blood sports enthusiast who had thrown an egg into his face, was the defining image of an otherwise barren campaign. However he was much admired for rescuing a canoeist who'd got himself in trouble in the summer of 2004.
The deputy prime minister
April 2006: Standing in at PMQs with William Hague across the dispatch box: Prescott reminded him that he was the first Tory leader never to become prime minister. "At least I got through the campaign without hitting anybody," Hague hit back. To which Prescott thundered: "I thought we had finished Punch and Judy politics. I knew I would be called Mr Punch, what do you think that leaves you?"
On putting one's feet up
Two weeks ago, facing the Commons for the first time since last month's reshuffle, Prescott explained the government's plans for - his? - comfortable retirement: "What we want is an affair and affordable pensions scheme."