Further proof that the special relationship ain't what it used to be comes from the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, today. Robinson is a combative boy who has never been afraid to pipe up at press conferences to ask the mother of awkward questions. Last year he asked George Bush whether he was "in denial" over the state of Iraq. The president has evidently not forgotten that slight, nor Nick's bald pate and geeky spectacles, which stand out among the sea of greying heads at pressers.
As Robinson tells it, Bush greeted him at the Bush-Brown press conference yesterday with a tetchy "You still hanging around?"
He followed that up by hitting the BBC man where he imagined it would hurt: "Next time, you should cover your bald head."
"I didn't know you cared," riposted Nick.
"I don't," replied the president. More banter here. Hardly Wildean, but Bush didn't get where he is today by being unable to put down a bolshy reporter.
Perhaps he was also releasing some of the tension generated by his first formal encounter with "the humorous Scotsman" (a type worthy of a hundred-year-old edition of Punch) or just dismayed at the relative youth of the press corps ("amazing country, Gordon, guy is under 40 years old, asking me and you questions. It's a beautiful sight," he observed of the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg, whose 38th birthday it was). Still, it's all grist to the Robinson mill. No political correspondent likes to be thought of as being in the pocket of a ruling administration, and this exchange will do his reputation no harm in the lobby. "Yo, Robinson" - it's not what you would have wanted, is it Nick?
