Trump's meeting with Putin was billed as the Super Bowl of handshakes, but what we got was awkward chit chat

Could this, the Super Bowl of handshakes, ever really live up to expectation

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit ahead of their meeting (Evan Vucci/AP)

Reality, these days, has a pernicious habit of far outreaching even the most outlandish expectations, so we can be forgiven for sitting back on our sofas and expecting a certain degree of pyrotechnics from what would be the first ever public and (as far as we know) private handshake between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Even against the grand backdrop of 20th century history, in which the staccato notes of intermittent encounters between American and Soviet leaders punctuate the background mood music of the life of the world, Trump/Putin was destined to be a big, big handshake. The Super Bowl of Handshakes. The Matrix Reloaded of Handshakes. If handshakes were works of great literature, this was to be the final instalment of Harry Potter.

Never before can two crinkled extremities have come together with greater portent. Great sweeping, geopolitical questions, intense interpersonal drama, all would be there.

Seasoned international power shake observers know while the right hand is the great statesman, the left is the thinker, the manoeuvrer, the strategiser. While the right holds firm for the snappers, the left works the back channels, sets the parameters. While the eyes are fixed, the right hand rock solid, the left reaches for the elbow, the upper arm, the back.

No one knows this better than Putin. It days not so long past, a Putin/Bush handshake would take whole afternoons, while their left hands explored ever more uncharted territory across the smalls of one another’s backs, deep into the dampening cleavages of the inner elbow.

That Trump does not possess, in this particular instance, the wanderer’s instinct, tells much about the man. That he has long seen a handshake as an opportunity to rip the arm clean off various US congressman, army generals and global leaders is all, one supposes, part of the charm.

It is sad to have to report that the Trump/Putin handshake did not live up to expectations. There were several, for a start. The first to emerge, via some sort of grainy security camera and made all the more exciting by the left of frame intrusion of the unmistakable beak of Jean-Claude Juncker, carried with it the air of two vaguely acquainted sales reps on lunch break at a trade fair, swapping awkward stories of the M6 toll road while waiting for the rotisserie chicken stand to open.

For the main event, Putin stared straight at the floor, while Trump put the word computer into first gear.

“President Putin and I are going to be discussing various things and I think it’s going well,” he told the world over the deafening clatter of a hundred thousand camera shutters. “He had some very very good thoughts. We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia and the United States.”

There was no wrench, by the way. If his advisers have got through to him, perhaps they could have a word about the whole Twitter account thing, which is, you know, kind of bringing down Western civilisation.

Either that, or when someone’s got the pee pee tape, you just tread a bit more carefully.