Bush rubs Merkel up the wrong way

It has proved one of the summer's most improbable smash video hits. Earlier this month the US president, George Bush, was captured giving Germany's leader Angela Merkel a quick back rub at the G8 summit in St Petersburg. Ms Merkel reacts with horror. She flings her arms up and grimaces as the world's most powerful man ambushes her from behind and gropes her shoulders. Afterwards Bush saunters off. The five-second video clip of their encounter has gone down a storm with American internet users, who have clicked on the video more than half a million times. The sequence has also been mixed to a rap by the US hip-hop artist Ludacris - to the chorus: "You don't know me like that". Other versions have tweaked the sequence to the Police song Message in a Bottle - with the song's words amended, of course, to "Massage on the Bottom".