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Uproar over Blair's `hand gesture' in student photo

A photograph of Tony Blair as a long-haired, boater-wearing student was reproduced in a number of British newspapers and online yesterday, with focus on his less than prime ministerial hand gesture.

The shaggy-haired undergraduate from St John's College, Oxford University -- dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt with enormous collars and a straw hat perched at a jaunty angle -- has been seen before but only from the waist up.

British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) television's flagship Newsight political programme has now unearthed the original and published it in full, complete with the then 21-year-old Blair's universally understood right-hand gesture around his groin area.

Archery club

A Newsnight reporter found the snap of the apparently well-oiled college archery club in 1975 while researching a student photograph of David Cameron, the current leader of the main opposition Conservative Party.

Cameron's photograph from his days at Magdalen College, Oxford, shows him and other members of the elite Bullingdon Club dining society in about 1986 striking a "New Romantics" pose in formal white bow ties and tails.

The picture also shows the current Tory spokesman on higher education Boris Johnson. The Bullingdon Club gained a reputation for hard drinking and bad behavior.

Rumor

It is rumored Blair's Labour Party was planning to use the photo on election material to disprove what they see as Cameron's "man of the people" claims but it has now been withdrawn by the copyright holders.

On Blair's photo, the Daily Express wondered: "So, Tony ... is that where you learnt gesture politics?"

BBC News Online gave Blair the benefit of the doubt, speculating that the future prime minister -- then in a student band called Ugly Rumours -- could merely have been playing air guitar.
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