British PM mocked for eating hot dog with knife and fork
The image was shattered when Cameron picked up cutlery to tackle the sausage-stuffed bread roll.
LONDON (AFP) - Britain s Prime Minister David Cameron has been skewered in the middle of a tense election campaign -- for eating a hot dog with a knife and fork.
The Conservative leader s visit on Monday to a voter barbecue backfired as an attempt to appear as an everyman, relaxing in a blue shirt as the beer flowed.
The image was shattered when Cameron picked up cutlery to tackle the sausage-stuffed bread roll.
Newspapers and social media seized on the photograph of Cameron using the cutlery as evidence that the prime minister is posh and unrelatable -- an image his party has battled to shake.
"David Cameron doesn t know how to eat a hot dog" announced the Metro; "I won t try to hide the fact I am posh" was the headline of the Daily Mail.
"What kind of person eats a hot dog with a knife and fork?" asked The Times journalist David Jack.
"I do the same at McDonalds with a Big Mac just before I ask to see the wine list," joked Twitter user Peter Smith.
Cameron s Tory party has long been characterised by the opposition Labour party as governing in the interests of the rich and powerful.
Cameron has said he will not change his upper-class accent to win votes, or apologise for what he called his "privileged upbringing" and "posh school".
Cameron, like Prince William, Prince Harry and a large proportion of Britain s ruling class, went to the prestigious boarding school Eton College.
It is not the first food-related photograph to menace the main candidates in the campaign for the May 7 election, for which Labour and the Conservative party have been deadlocked for months.
Photographs of Labour leader Ed Miliband making an ungainly attempt to eat a bacon sandwich helped forge a reputation of awkwardness the opposition leader has struggled to shed ever since.
