Giftgate Continues!

On the one hand, the rumpus over the gifts exchanged between Gordon Brown and Barack Obama is, as TIME’s Michael Scherer puts it, “exhausting”. Also, magnificently trivial. But let’s face it, giving the PM a collection of DVDs is pretty rubbish. As Iain Martin notes, Brown is an American history buff (his favourite political book is said to be Robert Caro’s monumental biography of LBJ) and it would not have taken much thought to find a better, more appropriate present.

Now one of Mark Hemingway’s readers raises a vital, as yet unanswered, question:

It would be funny if the DVDs Mr Obama gave Mr Brown were Region 1 NTSC and therefore not compatible with the UK where DVDs are region 2 and video format is PAL.