The Florence Nightingale Award

Right. Time for another competition. This one? The Florence Nightingale Award.

I want to know the best person you can think of who has shaken the hand of someone you have shaken hands with.

Best, incidentally, need not describe their moral worth. I mean notable/funny/powerful/famous etc. There are extra points if you take an interesting route to your destination. If you have shaken hands with someone like the Queen or Bill Clinton you need to have an imaginative idea and provide me with the best person that they have shaken hands with.

Here are a couple of my own entries:

• When I was a little boy, I shook hands with a man who, as a little boy, had shaken hands with Florence Nightingale.
• I have shaken hands with Henry Kissinger who shook hands with Chairman Mao.
• I have met Ron Silver (Bruno) who has shaken hands with President Bartlett

I have been playing this game informally for years. My favourite entry? Seb Coe said that he had shaken hands with Jesse Owens, who didn't shake hands with Hitler.

To enter, post a comment or email on commentcentral@thetimes.co.uk.

(UPDATE: I can get to Saddam via...)

Comments

[Tom]

I shook hands with Jack Straw, who famously shook hands with Robert Mugabe.

[Istjawurscht]

Odd sort of game to play, rather, it seems for those who aren’t quite sure of themselves, and need to show off just a little. So I’ll not put my name, but say I studied with someone who studied with Schoenberg, and was friends with Mahler, Berg ,Webern, Bartok and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. My mother was friends with Kafka, Zemlinsky and Leo Slezak, not to mention Max Brod, and she also danced with Austrian royalty. My great-grandmother was brought up in the house of Bismarck’s private banker, Baron Gerson von Bleichröder… I could go on, but it’s getting rather dull. In fact, who cares? You are what you are, no matter who you or your parents/friends once knew.

[David Boothroyd]

I once shook hands with John Platts-Mills QC (a member of the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency Labour Party); he once shook hands with 'Uncle' Joe Stalin.

[Stephen Pollard]

My father shook hands with William Simon, Nixon's Treasury Secretary.
And - this is stretching a point, since I'm not sure I ever actually shook hands with her - my grandma not only shook hands with Victor Sylvester, she won a Charleston competition dancing with him.
I have shaken hands with Bill Nicholson, the greatest football manager of all time. So it doesn't matter with whom he has shaken hands.

[Tim Worstall]

I offered John Bruton a pint once in a pub in Moscow which he declined but he did shake my hand so I thus get to just about every European leader of the 90s.

[Stephen Turner]

A colleague of mine, whose father was one of Franco's diplomats, was introduced to Hitler as a young boy.

Mathematicians would say that my Hitler number is 2
(my colleague's is 1 and Hitler's own was 0).

[Raj]

I've shaken hands with my Uncle (My mum's sister's husband) who was a civil sevant in India & has shaken hands with Indira Gandhi.

[David Moss]

My maternal grandmother sat on Rudyard Kipling's knee when he visited Jamaica once. (She may well have shaken hands with him first.)
I sat on my grandmother's knee. (I don't remember ever shaking hands with her.)
Just so, in a transitive sort of a way, I have sat on Rudyard Kipling's knee.
I realise that sitting on knees is very intimate, compared with shaking hands. Indeed, it may shock you.
I trust nevertheless, that there will be no anti-patellar exclusion of this important contribution to your competition, no manual supremacy.

[Henry Percy]

I never did anything but shake hands with my father, and he must have shaken a lot of other hands in his time. More to the point would be who's hand he didn't shake.

[Tim Footman]

I've shaken hands, on the same evening, with Boris Johnson and Kimberley Fortier.

I'm not sure I want to speculate on where those hands might have been.

[Frank Upton]

I shook hands with Dr Ian Paisley, who has shaken hands with God.

[Gabor Kovacs]

I have shaken hands with Mike Holubinka who has shaken hands with Peter Kelly who has shaken hands with Mark Johnson who once won a cd by The Eisenhowers who are fronted by Raymond Weir who has shaken hands with Mark Hunter.

[Nicola Norton]

I have shaken hands with Woody Allen in the front seat of a cab in New York. I rate this as my life's best handshake. After shaking my hand, he shook the hand of a Norwegian pop star who had travelled to NY to give him a copy of her latest album where she appeared topless on the cover.

[Stephen Wilson]

Nice version of 'I danced with a girl...', but I prefer the more amusing one of 'I have slept with x, who slept with y, who slept with z, etc etc. Nevertheless, I once shook hands with A. K. Chesterton, who shook hands with Lord Haw Haw and I also once shook hands with Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, who shook hands and other things with Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.

[Chris]

Guyanese (then British Guianan) politician Rudy Kendall was a member of Mission Chapel, a Congregationalist church in New Amsterdam of which my father was pastor in the late fifties and early sixties. I shook hands with Kendall as a child. It's a safe bet that he shook hands with most Guyanese politicians, numerous British ones, and I'll bet both HM the Queen and Fidel Castro. Kendall got me the autographs of pretty much the entire BG legislature, including Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, and many others few readers will have heard of. (Jagan, Burnham and presumptively Castro are probably the worst, rather than the best people who've shaken hands with someone I've shaken hands with, but there you go.)

[Chris C]

Ted Heath gets me Saddam Hussein and Herman Goerring.

[Richard James]

When I first came to work in Germany in 1997 I met and shook hands with my local wine & spirits merchant in Bad Homburg, Hessen. As a schoolboy he grew up in Nurenburg before the 2nd World War and was presented to and shook hands with Adolf Hitler when the German Chancellor visited the city. He was so proud he claims he did not wash his hand for a week!

[Anthony Wells]

Ted Heath also gets you (and me) Heinrich Himmler.

[Mr Eugenides]

I, er, shook hands with Monica Lewinsky once.

Does this count?

[Rob]

I've shaken hands with the Dalai Lama, who immediately afterwards shook hands with my friend, Tom. I then shook hands with Tom.

[Darell Miller]

Shook hands with a girl who won a Silver Medal at Moscow Olymipcs and had shaken hands with Lord Seb Coe when he was just a runner nrather than a property dveleoper!. Also one of my colleagues' father was a UN diplomat from Nigeria and took him as a teenager to a dinner where he met (shook hands, talked to etc.) Nelson Mandela.

[Norman Briffa]

I shook hands with my brother-in-law who had KISSED the hand of Pope Paul VI

[David Moss]

My maternal grandmother sat on Rudyard Kipling's knee when he visited Jamaica once. (She may well have shaken hands with him first.)
I sat on my grandmother's knee. (I don't remember ever shaking hands with her.)
Just so, in a transitive sort of a way, I have sat on Rudyard Kipling's knee.
I realise that sitting on knees is very intimate, compared with shaking hands. Indeed, it may shock you. Think, if Florence Nightingale had sat on Chairman Mao's knee (which she could have done until he was 17, I checked)!
I trust nevertheless, that there will be no anti-patellar exclusion of this important contribution to your competition.
At the first sign of manual supremacist tendencies, I will force you to listen to the story of how I travelled by train once, from Horsham to London, sitting opposite Enoch Powell, who pretended not to recognise me and insisted on reading a lot of Ulster newspapers instead of listening to me.
If that doesn't do the trick, I will tell you about how, one warm Summer's day, the tube pulled in to Southfields, the doors opened, and suddenly the sun was hidden, there was an unhealthy chill in the air, the birds all stopped singing and David Blunkett got into the carriage.
His dog stopped him from trying to sit on my knee (I made that up) and then he, like Powell before him, refused to shake hands with me, preferring apparently to while away his time planning the destruction of the education system and of all civil liberties.
If only these people had listened to me, then Mrs Kelly, for one, would probably now be shaking me warmly by the hand.
If.

[Hilary B]

Have shaken hands with my South American wife's uncle - who had shaken hands several times with Franco, Pope Paul VI and - regularly - Pinochet.

[David Kirwan]

This one's a bit vague and unprovable, but I shook hands with my mother. (You think it's odd to shake hands with your own mother? Try standing next to her at Mass when the sign of peace comes round.) And she, before the war, shook hands with a Japanese student by name T. Soyeshima who was lodging with her mother at Oxford, and he, according to family rumour, was son of the Japanese Prime Minister. So, assuming protocol permitted anyone to shake hands with the Emperor, I claim a strong presumption of Emperor Hirohito.

[Hilary B]

Come to think of it, I have shaken hands with Al Gore and the Queen, which takes you just about anywhere you want to go...

[Serf]

I have shaken hands with my Uncle, who shook the hand of Field Marshall Montgomery, who in turn was of course on hand shaking terms with Winston Churchill. The greatest of all Britons, is of course famous for kissing Stalin on both cheeks (I'll kiss him on all four if necessary).

[Tom Tracey]

A variation on this theme... I once had a pee next to Max Bygraves. When I told him that this was memorable enough to tell my friends, he told me that he had recently had a pee next to Prince Philip no less!
Does this count?

[Robin Harries]

I shook hands with a man (I forget his name) who interviewed Lenin for the (then) Manchester Guardian in the 20s. I assume they shook hands, therefore my Lenin number is 2. I met a woman who was governess to the children of von Ribbentrop when he was ambassador to London in the 30s. My Hitler number is 3.

[Chris D]

Gyles Brandreth tells the tale of having shaken the hand of Christopher Robin, who shook, but mostly held, the paw of Winnie-The-Pooh.

John Major glad-handed people in the three-way-marginal constituency in '92 where I went to school; I fought my way through the scrum for a handshake from him, which means I can claim a pretty thorough knowledge, at one remove, of Edwina Currie.

[Tom Paine]

Ted Heath got me Mao Tse-Tung, as well as those mentioned above that I didn't know about I guess.

[IceKo]

I've shaken hands with Mother Teresa who had shaken hands with several Popes, all of whom had surely shaken hands with their predecessors right back to Peter, who no doubt shook hands with Jesus who likely pressed the flesh a bit more firmly than was the case in Dr Paisley's divine encounter. I've also shaken hands with my sons and daughters which makes my Adam number several billion and something.

[Londoner]

I shook hands with Clem Atlee when I was three (Cornonation Day street party in Walthamstow) he'd bowed to the Queen :)

[Londoner]

I shook a placard at two jags - does that count?

[Londoner]

I'm glad I didn't shake two jags' hand - well, you don't know what he's shaken, do you?

[Philip Cocchiola]

Here's a variation on this, based on the "six degrees of separation" concept. How far back in history can you go? I'll give an example.
1. I knew my uncle.
2. My uncle new Charles DeGaulle.
3. Charles DeGaulle knew King George VI.
4. King George VI knew Queen Victoria.
5. Queen Victoria knew King George IV.
6. King George IV knew King George III.
That's a line from 1738 to date.
Anyway, an interesting variation. Try it.

[Andrew Brennan]

I shook hands with Warren Beatty...thank goodness after he shook something of Julie Christie and before something of Madonna!!
Also shook hands with Sean Connery...satisfaction enough!!

[seamus]

I married the woman who gave John Lennon his first copy of 'Catcher in the Rye"

[Richard Hamblyn]

My father once played rugby in Uganda against a team that included the young Idi Amin - he also shook hands in Ethiopia in 1960 with Emperor Haile Salassie.

[Sylvia]

Didn't have time to shake hands with him...
In 1982 we were running late to get to a friend's place to see the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane on TV.
The expressway was nearly deserted. We came up behind a black car, I accelerated out past it and who should turn to look as we flashed by but the Duke of Edinburgh.
So who else has turned the head of royalty?

[Hugo]

I once shook hands with the Queen Mum (keeping my other hand in my pocket, which got me into terrible trouble) and she must have shaken hands with George V and done rather more than that with George VI.

[James Cleverly]

I once shook hands with Pele who shook the hand of.......Bobby Moore!!!!!!

The great Bobby Moore. Bobby Moore I tell you.

[Seasider]

I shook my fist at the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on Tottenham Court Road when they purred by in a flash car (about 10 years ago). Does that count? I bet Phil has shaken his fist at loads of people. Not sure about Liz though.