G20 summit: live blogging

As he prepares to embark on a flight to Britain today, President Obama’s aides are being understandably sensitive about disclosing what gifts he might be packing with him. British diplomats in Washington are still answering more than 2,000 letters of apology from American citizens for Mr Obama’s alleged insult to the Prime Minister when he visited the White House this month.

The cause of all this was the President’s gift of a boxed set of 25 DVDs. It was perceived as having shown little consideration, at least compared with the thought that went into Mr Brown’s gift of a desk ornament fashioned from the timbers of the Victorian antislave ship HMS Gannet.

The plastic helicopters that Sarah Brown received from Michelle Obama in return for carefully chosen dresses from Topshop did not seem to be particularly generous either.

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There have even been reports that Mr Brown is unable to watch the movies because they were embedded with the wrong region code - a metaphor, perhaps, for the divisions between Europe and America which have characterised the G20 build-up. Downing Street yesterday pointed out, through gritted teeth, that even in the current straitened circumstances, it still has enough know-how to overcome such an intercontinental divide.

The irritation inside the Obama Administration over how such a trivial matter should have ballooned out of all proportion is still more palpable. A White House source complained about the “overinterpretation” by the British media of both the gift and a decision against against holding a formal press conference.

The British Embassy believes that its postbag was inflated by a Fox TV commentator who, picking up on reports in Britain, urged viewers to write in. Some of the letters touchingly offered their own gifts for the Prime Minister, including some tea.

The President, however, is thought to recognise that Mr Brown did not deserve to be battered by a boxed set. When he telephoned the Prime Minister on his way back to London, a measure of regret is understood to have been expressed about how the visit had been covered.

Mr Obama knows that every gesture on his trip this week will be scrutinised for evidence of another government humiliation. And a scheduled meeting with David Cameron is already being reported as a coup for the Conservatives.

Not so, insisted the White House, which emphasised that while Mr Obama “is spending 30 minutes on Wednesday with Cameron, he is devoting “some three hours . . . with Prime Minister Brown”.

The talks with Mr Brown tomorrow will include breakfast, a formal bilateral meeting and then a joint press conference which, one British official observed, will this time “include flags, podiums and all the trimmings”.

In a GMTV interview yesterday Mr Cameron described Mr Obama as an “incredible man”, even though he is fundamentally at odds with the big-spending President on the need for any further stimulus. Having earlier insisted that he was not seeking talks with Mr Obama this week, he suggested: “You have to sort of make yourself available and hope you are going to get some good meetings.”

It is not clear if the two men will exchange gifts. Last summer, when Mr Obama visited London, Mr Cameron was praised for his sophistication when he gave the would-be president a box of CDs by artists such as Lily Allen. The White House yesterday noted the irony that CDs and DVDs are, on the face of it, “quite similar”.

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