Outside a butcher's shop in Glenrothes, John Prescott is seeking to bend the arc of history, while modestly soaking up praise for his new television series - an examination of class in modern Britain.

“It's brilliant, pure entertainment,” John Martin, a local drug support worker, gushes. The former Deputy Prime Minister beams a self-satisfied smile.

It is here in the murky interior of the Kingdom Shopping Centre, a concrete monstrosity at the heart of one of Scotland's unloved new towns, that Britain's latest television superstar and most infamous bulimic believes that he can pull off the impossible.

He was parachuted in at the eleventh hour to swing an improbable by-election victory, save the Government, put spring in the Brown Bounce and knock the Scottish National Party off its perch.

The press of people around him ensures that Mr Prescott's quest is slow and stately. With his own prime-time TV series, everyone wants a bit of him and he is happy to oblige, swapping stories about his seafaring days and his memories of the rabidly anti-royalist MP Willie Hamilton, whose rants are well remembered round here.

In all the excitement, no one notices the local Labour candidate, the somewhat mousy Lindsay Roy, who keeps disappearing beneath the scrum.

It is only outside BB's Coffee and Muffins that the mood changes. Someone mentions that the bookies have cut the odds on an SNP victory, and reminds Mr Prescott that Alex Salmond is already bragging about a Nationalist victory. Scotland's First Minister should know - he's a former racing tipster.

“That cheeky chappy is always up there shouting this, isn't he?” growls Mr Prescott, shaking his head. “At the end of the day, McCain was saying the same thing, ‘We've won, we've won.' They didn't, did they?”

The thing is, Mr Prescott explains, he has a bit of history with the SNP. It was the Scottish Nationalists who voted down the Callaghan Government, forcing the 1979 general election. “That gave us 18 years of the Tories. We were very bitter about it at the time, you know,” he confides.

But what is exercising minds in Glenrothes is Scottish independence. That is, he concedes, a big argument. He has always argued the case for devolution, “because you do need to have decentralisation, but not separation”.

And what would the SNP do about the problems of the Bank of Scotland - eaten up by Lloyds TSB - and the worldwide financial crisis? Have they a special Nationalist policy on that, he wonders. He answers his own question: “Salmond can't do anything about the international problems we've got. Most of his arguments have gone.”

For good measure, he dismisses the Tories' prospects at today's poll. “Cameron's not got many votes round here, has he?” he sneers.

So if it's not Salmond, Cameron and the rest, who on earth could lead Glenrothes and the rest of the free world out of crisis? Mr Prescott has the answer. “I don't care whether he bloody smiles or not. As long as he does the job, and he's doing it. Global problems want global solutions and we've got the best man.” Amazingly, he means Gordon Brown.

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