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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Feb 11 2012 02:28 | LAST UPDATED Feb 11 2012 02:28 |
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So, what did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown do that meant his Japanese hosts at the G8 summit placed him at the far end of the table? Probably nothing. Someone has to sit there, and everyone present is usually very keen to get these grisly events over and go to bed. True, Brown (9) was only one space from United States President George Bush (11), probably because they both speak a version of English. So do José Manuel Barroso, the EU's man (8), and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seated opposite Brown PM (7). Despite the hovering presence of interpreters the host state tries to seat VIPs and their wives near people they can converse with unaided. But we all know how hard it would be, especially for an essentially small-talk-free zone such as Brown to engage Bush across someone else's lap, in this case Canadian PM's wife Laureen Harper (10). And, surely, the chances of a bread-roll fight will have been stronger at Silvio Berlusconi's end? The protocol-lite Italian PM (1) will have seen Canada's Stephen Harper, seated opposite (15), as a personal challenge. So uptight these Calvinistic gringos! It would be nice to think that Britain's Sarah Brown (14) would have joined in. But why do summiteers use long rectangular tables? Fifteen people who, mostly, don't know each other very well, if at all (it's hard to keep up with Sarko's wives, he had a different one for last year's G8), can't find it easy. Joachim Sauer (it means "sour"), Chancellor Merkel's stern professorial spouse didn't even try. He and Carla Bruni of France are the missing ones. Host countries spend almost as much time negotiating the spouses dinner as they do the main summit, where, nowadays, round or even elliptical tables are preferred. Protocol matters, so that the three heads of state -- as distinct from mere heads of government -- are at the centre: Bush, Sarkozy and Medvedev of Russia. But the Japanese, like the Chinese (whose absence from the table is even more conspicuous than Bruni's) have more pressing worries: cutlery or chopsticks? They seem to have settled for both, plus a modest eight-course meal. Though criticised on Tuesday by Western puritans, it falls well short of the Asian 25-course summit model. - guardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008 Who are they? 1 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi 2 Margarida Sousa Uva 3 Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev 4 Laura Bush 5 Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda 6 Svetlana Medvedev 7 German Chancellor Angela Merkel 8 EU Commission chairperson José Manuel Barroso 9 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown 10 Laureen Harper 11 United States president George Bush 12 Kiyoko Fukuda 13 French President Nicolas Sarkozy 14 Sarah Brown 15 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper  CONTINUES BELOW TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
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