The Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, who last week had to apologise to Kelly's widow for the Government's part in naming her husband as the BBC's source, is on a family holiday, having declined to go to the funeral.
Yesterday Prescott also had to eat humble pie, telling Mrs Kelly that neither he nor Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is on holiday in Barbados in the home of pop star Cliff Richard, had authorised the latest slur on her husband - the suggestion by a Downing St press officer, in private briefings to journalists, that Kelly was a Walter Mitty character, a fantasist.
After the Independent carried the allegation that the Walter Mitty slur had been made, Downing St spent 24 hours half-denying it, then yesterday admitted it had been said and named the offending press officer as Tom Kelly, deputy to the chief Blair spin doctor, Alastair Campbell.
Campbell is the man alleged in the original BBC story to have exaggerated intelligence reports of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein to curry support for the attack on Iraq from British MPs and the public.
American author James Thurber created the Mitty character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in which a hen-pecked man of modest means and talents persistently daydreams about a much more exciting and glamorous life.
Tom Kelly said the comment had been made in a "private conversation" with a reporter and was not designed to discredit Kelly.
"I now recognise that even that limited form of communication was a mistake, given the current climate," Tom Kelly said.
"I therefore unreservedly apologise to Dr Kelly's widow and family for having intruded on their grief."
As the story runs and runs, Westminster political journalists and politicians, as well as Government press officers past and present, are being wheeled out for endless radio and television chat shows.
The closeness of the relationships that is being unveiled among those working at Westminster must be a revelation to the public.
Yesterday on early-morning radio one political editor, Michael White of the left-of-centre Guardian, told Sir Bernard Ingham, former press officer to Margaret Thatcher: "I have been lied to by you Bernard, and by Alastair."
Sir Bernard made no attempt to deny it - but said he always expected anything he said, on or off the record, to make it into print.
Tom Kelly, a career civil servant - unlike Campbell, who was a tabloid journalist until Blair recruited him - is widely expected to resign or be sacked soon.
The inquiry into how Kelly's name was leaked into the public arena after he confessed to his bosses that he had talked to journalists begins next week. The judge conducting it has said sittings will not be televised - and that he will call evidence from Blair.
In the quiet of the August parliamentary recess the story refuses to go away and carries with it an even seedier subtext, which is about the infighting inside Downing St between various advisers to the Blairs.
Cherie Blair, ill-advisedly, allowed photographers into the marital bedroom while she was having her lipstick put on by her notorious style guru, Carole Caplin.
Caplin was said to have arranged the photoshoot - but at the weekend the suggestion was that it was Cherie Blair's adviser, Fiona Millar, partner of Campbell, who authorised the taking and the publication of the shots.
Millar is about to leave Cherie Blair's payroll and the reports continue to suggest that Campbell will leave Blair's once the Kelly inquiry is complete.
Stand by for more tabloid revelations.
British Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee transcript:
Evidence of Dr David Kelly
Key players in the 'sexed-up dossier' affair
Herald Feature: Iraq
Iraq links and resources
