Arm in arm with Ma'am, Michelle has a royal touch

THE gesture was an unquestionably friendly and reciprocal one, a natural reaction from a woman with a warm and obviously tactile nature.

Yet when Michelle Obama put her arm briefly around the Queen's back at Buckingham Palace yesterday it provoked a minor furore over suggestions that she breached royal etiquette.

Even just touching the Queen has provoked debate in the past. In 1992, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was dubbed "The Lizard of Oz" when he touched the Queen's back during a royal tour; his successor John Howard was accused of a similar gesture in 2000, although he denied he actually made contact. This time, however, photographs and film clearly show that the Queen made the gesture first, putting her hand on Mrs Obama's back during an animated conversation in which the two woman discussed their significant height difference.

Mrs Obama reciprocated and the two stood together for a few seconds. The First Lady had demonstrated her tactile side earlier when she hugged the child of a cancer sufferer during a visit to Maggie's Centre at Charing Cross Hospital; when she left, she also embraced the centre manager.

Although American media reports suggested the British were getting flustered over such a breach of protocol by the First Lady, the fuss all seemed to be coming from the other side of the Atlantic. Buckingham Palace said that, contrary to most assumptions, they had no rules on whether it was correct to touch the Queen: "It is the same as whether people want to curtsey or whether they should wait for the Queen to speak to them, we simply say you should do whatever feels appropriate in the situation.''

Charles Kidd of Debrett's agreed: "I think it's a bit of nonsense. It is a perfectly normal human response to put an arm around someone or guide an elbow.''

He said the convention of not touching the monarch probably derived from earlier more formal courts as well as the ancient idea of the "divine right" of kings, in which royals were deemed to have the prerogative on a healing touch.