Sketch: Despite the protests, it wasn't the president who was the one caught napping yesterday

THE fact that bookmakers were paying out last night to anyone who betted on 71-year-old Ken Clarke drifting off during the first speech by a US president to a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament, should not detract from the fact the rest of the audience was held in rapt attention.

The justice secretary, who also allegedly - but perhaps more understandably - dozed off during the Budget earlier this year, has been under a lot of pressure lately after some ill-advised comments on rape, so was unsurprisingly worn out.

He missed President Barack Obama being led into Westminster Hall, where kings have been condemned to death and lain in state, by a somewhat starry-eyed Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow.

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He may not walk on water for Americans any more, but in the cathedral-like chamber, Mr Obama found an audience which still sees him as messianic. He was, after all, the first US president to be granted the honour of addressing a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament - the Commons and Lords.

He noted that the three previous people to be granted the same honour were the Pope, the Queen and Nelson Mandela.

Either a tremendous honour or the "first line in a great joke," he added.

But the question was never about whether the British political establishment loved Mr Obama, but if the US president loved Britain.

He was, as he reminded an audience in a room where an empire was forged, the grandson of a Kenyan cook in the British Army. What he politely didn't mention was the ill treatment that grandfather received from his colonial masters.

His speech lacked much of the customary warmth and passion that observers have got used to at his rallies, and often felt more like a scholarly discourse by a history lecturer on the paths of the two countries.

Outside parliament, orange pyjama-clad protesters called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison - a reminder that a man who promised "change" is now more popular among the establishment than he is with the revolutionaries.