In an era where the empty gesture is deemed eminently newsworthy in the absence of anything of note actually occurring, perhaps the most vacuous of the lot is the pre-match football handshake. Presumably cooked up by a coven of hacks to lighten their workload, how they must rub their hands together greedily (and ironically, last weekend, given the dearth of hand-to-hand contact) every time Chelsea play QPR or Liverpool and Manchester United reactivate rivalries.
