Washington, Feb. 6: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has become the first world statesman to shake hands with U. S. President Barack Obama, which may not amuse Blair's successor at 10, Downing Street, Gordon Brown.

Even though he has been out of office for 18 months, it was Blair who was endorsed by the new American president as "my very good friend", to the intense irritation of 10 Downing Street, reports Fox News.

Brown had assumed he was locked in a race to beat Germany''s Angela Merkel or France''s President Sarkozy for the first gilded photo-opportunity with the American president, but it was Blair, the man who beat him to the leadership of the Labour Party, who became the first to bask again in reflected glory.

"I want to thank my good friend Tony Blair for coming today, somebody who did it first and perhaps did it better than I will do. He has been an example for so many people around the world of what dedicated leadership can accomplish. And we are very grateful to him," Obama said in praise that was termed as being extraordinarily lavish and remarkable.

Blair drew laughter when he told how he was not always appreciated so much in Britain.

"I was reminded of this as I waited in London in the snow to fly to America and made the mistake of reading a British newspaper. It was the very conservative Daily Telegraph. A few days ago I gave an interview in which I remarked how much cleverer my wife was than me. The Telegraph has a famous letters page and in it was a letter from a correspondent that read something like ''Dear Sir, with reference to your headline, Blair admits wife is more intelligent than him, I fail to see why this is news. It went on, ''most of us have known this for a long time'' and as a p. s ''perhaps the bar however has not been set high''. (ANI)