QUICK: who is this happy couple and why did this shot spark a shit-storm*?

Fortunately, palace officials intervened before they began playing with each other’s boobs.

Naturally, the British press got their knickers in an immediate twist. Especially because (sit down) THE QUEEN MADE THE FIRST MOVE!
The Daily Mail breathlessly reports;

She is not renowned for public
displays of affection. Which made the Queen’s decision to put a
friendly arm around Michelle Obama’s waist at a Buckingham Palace G20
reception – prompting the U.S. President’s wife to return the gesture –
so utterly astonishing.

Finding herself next to Mrs Obama, the Queen remarked on their height difference. As she did so, her hand edged towards the small of Mrs Obama’s back. Mrs Obama responded – and
even rubbed the Queen’s shoulder – before both women moved gently apart
after about ten seconds.

The sight of the Queen publicly hugging another woman
astonished other guests. An onlooker said: ‘It was a pretty
simultaneous gesture. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.’

It
was an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: A breach of
centuries-long protocol when the friendly and outgoing Michelle Obama
put her arm round the Queen.

It now appears,
however, that it may have been the Queen who made the initial move. In
any case, it was the first time that anyone can remember in her long
public life that she has put her arm around another woman.

‘A mutual and
spontaneous display of affection and appreciation,’ was how a
Buckingham Palace spokesman hastened to describe it.

But the protocol
concerning the sovereign has been set in stone for generations.
‘Whatever you do,’ courtiers are apt to warn, ‘don’t touch the Queen.’

Who can forget the
furore that erupted in 1992 when the then Australian prime minister,
Paul Keating, put his arm round the Queen’s waist at Canberra’s
Parliament House, and found himself lampooned as ‘the Lizard of Oz’ for
his faux-pas.