Shared Opinion | 7 February 2009

I’m a convert to shoe-throwing, and its power. But I bet they ban shoes in public pretty soon

Where do we stand, then, on shoe-throwing? Me, I’m in two minds. Muntadhar al-Zaidi, I dunno, I think he carried it off. At least he threw both, and at least he was in the Middle East. Whatever happened next, is my point, at least he didn’t have to hop. At least he didn’t have a clammy sock.

I do not yet know the name of the 27-year-old man who lobbed a shoe at Wen Jiabao on Monday, but I do know, from the pictures, that he only threw the one. And, more pertinently, he was in Cambridge. It can’t have been nice in Cambridge on Monday. It wasn’t nice anywhere on Monday. Did he bring a spare shoe? Was he expecting the Chinese Premier to throw his shoe back? I don’t think so.