Is Obama Media Literate?

After a late night watching a fantastic production of the Wizard of Oz in Potter's Bar (I've been to Isafjordur, Talkeetna, Helsinki, Bergen and even Sheffield, but this felt further north than any of them) I was so late to the gym this morning I only just got there in time for the Sky News intro to the Brown-Obama press conference. The guys were sort of pottering about in a Downing St room, making like just an ordinary social call that just happened to be picked up by half a dozen news cameras, so it was an excellent opportunity to examine how they tackled the 'just act natural' challenge.

Brown sort of shuffled about and smiled (a less frightening sight than when I first saw him in the flesh, striding through the NFT shoulder to elbow with Wilf Stevenson in 1993, but still deeply unnerving) and was presumably saying things to Obama like "yes we did have to get new curtains and carpets in here; you wouldn't believe the state the last people left it in". What fascinated me though was how Obama seeemed to be silently upstaging him all the time just by body language. He constantly used an 'ushering' kind of gesture that suggested it was his house, not Brown's, and made Brown look as though he was following Obama around. The nicest touch though (used on the BBC's 10 o' clock news tonight) was as they walked past the cameras to leave the room. As they drew level with the cameras, Obama casually put his arm round Brown's shoulders, so that the last image we got was a rear view of the two of them with Obama's arm lying proprietorially across Brown's bowed, weary-looking back. It wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been done at that precise moment.

It was almost as much fun as watching my daughter play a Munchkin, a Poppy, a Winkie, a JitterBug and a resident of the Emerald City. But not quite.