At first, only two podiums were set up for the press conference at the impressively chaotic post-Gaza summit held, on January 18th, in a golf resort in Sharm el-Sheikh: one for Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president and the host, and one for Nicolas Sar-kozy. This did not please the British contingent, whose plane had already been forced to circle above the Sinai peninsula while the French president landed. Then, moments before the soundbites were to be uttered, a phalanx of panicky Egyptians dismantled the podiums and dragged in a dais, some carpets and a long table. Gordon Brown eventually squeezed in between Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi.
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