Tracey Temple, the British deputy prime minister's ex-diary secretary, is set to tell her side of the story in a British Sunday newspaper, publicist Max Clifford confirmed.

He said she was not looking for the scalp of her former boss and simply wanted to set the record straight. She would be paid "an awful lot more" than the £100,000 fee that had been reported, said Clifford.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "She had absolutely nothing to do with the story coming out, so then she went to the cabinet office and her colleagues for help and advice on how to handle the media and got nothing. Nothing at all. All they were interested in was looking after John Prescott. Meanwhile, day after day, she is reading stuff in the papers, a lot of which is totally untrue.

Don't you think she's entitled to stand up for herself?"

Asked if she wanted to see Prescott lose his job over the affair, he said: "No.

She wants the truth out there. She wants people to judge her as she really is, as opposed to what they are reading which is 10% reality and 90% rubbish."

Also yesterday, constituents leaving Prescott's monthly surgery said they had been told he was not coming. More than a dozen people turned up at the East Hull Labour Party office on Holderness Road where Prescott holds his surgeries on the last Saturday of every month.

But those leaving the building said their cases had been dealt with by a secretary.

"Not that one, " one elderly man quipped.

None of those leaving wanted to discuss the situation or give their names.

One man said: "The whole issue of Prescott's matrimonial situation and where he is was not discussed."

A notice in the window of the office, which has been there for some time, explained how surgeries 'may be cancelled at short notice due to government business'.

At Prescott's home a couple of miles away in the Sutton area of the city, there was no sign of the deputy prime minister or his wife, Pauline. The two large sets of gates in front of the detached property were closed and the uniformed police guard, which was outside earlier last week, had gone.