Bush show rolls into town

The Bush wagon train has rolled into town, all saddled up and gun totin' ready and, boy, do we know it.

All 30 slick black Cadillacs, all 700 secret servicemen, 14,000 London policemen and, should we forget, the Queen - resplendent in lilac but looking tired and rather lost amid the yee-ha, sheer prairie lands pioneer invasion that makes up this president's cavalcade. This Milky Bar Kid don't travel light.

Tony Blair arrived 15 minutes early, looking as nervous as a bridegroom before the bride arrives. He loitered uncertainly in front of the Palace but the big wigs from the armed forces, decked out in medals, threw him the odd word. Jack Straw and David Blunkett were his ushers.

Just before 10 the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh swept out of a side gate at the Palace. Three minutes later, as the guns of the royal salute by the King's Troop deafened us from across Green Park, the President and Mrs Bush came out of the same gate.

Only amid the pomp of a state visit, the first by a US president since 1918, do the dignitaries leave by opposite back doors of the same house, only to say surprise hellos in the front garden.

The Queen gave what seemed to be a thin smile as the President and his wife emerged. The welcoming pavilion - gaudy red white and blue - was more Kebab-2-Go than Her Majesty's house. It is bubble-gummed on to the front of the palace like a Disneyworld carousel. The Bushwhackers, the nouveau peaceniks, were elsewhere.

One brave protester unfurled a Go-home-Bush banner but the sheriff's deputy saw him off. The others had been herded up, lassoed like prairie cattle, into their own acre of the range somewhere beyond St James's Park. Not a cardigan or a bobble hat in sight.

Well maybe one. As the Band of the Grenadier Guards struck up the Stars and Stripes, a lone bobble hat, megaphone in hand, let rip. To the tune of She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain, he chanted: "If you think Blair's a poodle, shout woof woof ". David Blunkett's labrador gave a suspiciously supportive bark.

The crowds ... well there weren't many, or almost any. But they politely introduced themselves to each other. John McKenzie, a building merchant from Southend, had been here since 8am. "I was a bit on my own to be honest," he said. He held one of the few Union Jacks in sight.

Back in front of the Palace, George Bush must have felt as if he was playing to a half-empty theatre. His wife, Laura, in metallic sage green, stood next to Prince Philip as rigid as a woman who has just put on fake tan and doesn't want to smudge a bit. Nearby, the full contingent of footmen loitered; the press pack didn't spot anyone from the Mirror but we weren't certain.

Security scares or not, this was always going to be a discordant affair and so it turned out. As the American national anthem was played, Jody Forrester, a mother of three from Brooklyn, put her hand on her heart and sang along. "You have to show respect whatever you think," she said. She didn't vote for Mr Bush but he is her president. Behind her the British contingent just tittered. The President is a tactile man. Maybe too much so for Prince Philip, whom he kept patting on the back.

The cavalry's march-past swept by with perfect synchronised Britishness, impeccable military timing for a state visit which almost from its inception has missed the beat.

Earlier, the guard of honour of the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, had arrived at the Palace huddled in a white minibus, standing room only. Typical of a London bus.

By 10 it was all over and you sensed both relief and anticlimax. As the march-past finished, just the odd raised voice filtered across the Victoria Memorial, telling Mr Bush to go home. Truly, it was almost as if we were watching a shotgun wedding where the bride (George) is up the duff and the groom (Tony) just wants to scarper.