Jack Straw shakes hands with Robert Mugabe. Photograph: Newsnight/PA
He may not have sweaty palms, a bone-crushing grasp or terrible line in anecdotes (though all these things are possible) but Robert Mugabe has once again emerged as perhaps the most tricky man in the world to shake hands with.
Before Jack Straw there was former England cricket captain Nasser Hussain, who asked the British government to tell him if he should take his team to Zimbabwe for the 2003 cricket world cup and, receiving no answer that would cover the possible ICC fines and so on, was left pondering the ethics of a Mugabe-endorsing handshake at the beginning of the match. He pulled out after an agonising few weeks of indecision, citing death threats.
When Jacques Chirac riled London later that month by inviting the Zimbabwean leader to a France-Africa summit, he offered Mr Mugabe a cursory handshake but not his customary kiss.
So Mr Straw's handshake at a South African diplomatic reception in New York was more than a mere diplomatic slip, especially when you consider how much political capital the Foreign Office has spent telling others to stay clear of him. Mr Straw attempted to cover his back, first by claiming it was "quite dark in that corner" so he did not know who he was being pushed towards, and second, by
reaching for a defence of almost comedic Britishness that it was not proper to be "discourteous or rude" to anyone.
It was all very polite and a little like a Hugh Grant film; a sort of Notting Hill at the United Nations. The footage does indeed show Mr Straw walking rather hurriedly into the Zimbabwean delegation and then making a swift but awkward exit. The highlight, however, was not a Grant-esque public declaration of love but the bewildered Mugabe aide who asked the president "Who was that?". "Jack Straw", replied Mr Mugabe, with a smile and more than a hint of satisfaction.
