My St Petersburg friends only agreed to send me the transcript when I swore it would be for my eyes only. Hence, in the good tradition of journalistic ethics, I’m publishing it immediately.
Putin (VP): This meeting will come to order! Everybody sit! Refusal to do so will be treated as an escape attempt! Sorry, inside joke.
Merkel (AM): Jawohl, Herr Oberst! But I’m not going to sitzen next to François. He always plays footsies.
Hollande (FH): Listen, sale boche, I’d rather play footsies with a dog!
AM: Ja. Like a rottweiler.
FH: Don’t you dare call Valerie that!
Cameron (DC): Can we please get back to the business at hand?
VP: Shut up, Dave. No one ever listens to you. Or your little island.
DC: Oh yeah?
VP: Yeah. Da.
DC: Says who?
VP: Says I.
DC: Well, I’ll have you know that our little island has made a big contribution to the world. We gave you the Beatles, Sid Vicious, Amy Winehouse…
FH: Amy Woo?
DC: Not Woo. She wasn’t Chinese, for heaven’s sake. Winehouse!
FH: Woo is Amy Winehouse?
DC: No, Woo is Chinese. Amy was a great British artist – as great at Mick Jagger and…
AM: You’re a fine one to talk about culture, Dave. You can’t even speak German.
DC: Oh yes I can! All Englishmen are multilingual!
AM: Ah so? Say something in German then.
DC: Er… Also, Schweinhund, vee’ve got vays to make you talk…
VP: Silence! We are world leaders, not squabbling fishwives! Speaking of which, Angela, why isn’t your foreign minister here? Westerwelle?
AM: Guido had to fly back home. His husband doesn’t know how to operate the dishwasher.
VP: I thought Guido was the husband…
AM: Not this week.
DC: He’s the husband to every man and the wife to every woman…
VP: Shut up, Dave, no one listens to you.
DC: A propos Guido, Vladimir, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about gay rights in Russia…
VP: Gay? Does this stand for Got Aids Yet?
FH: C’est pas drôle. Is not funny. Valerie is worried…
VP: I’ll tell you what she should be worried about, suka. Your going along with that mudak President Obama on Syria, that’s what. And where do you think you’re going, Barack?
Obama (BO): To the other end of the table. I’m not gonna sit next to you. Not after what you’ve just said.
VP: Oh really? Well, let me tell you this: you drop one bomb on Syria, and we’ll whack you in the shithouse!
BO: You will, eh? Well, let me tell you, we can bomb Syria flat and there’s zilch you can do about it!
VP: One bomb, Barack, one bomb, and we’ll sell Assad something to blow your ships out of the water to tsardom come.
BO: You do that and we’ll impound all your laundered cash in our banks.
VP: And we’ll dump all our dollars, a trillion of them. Your dollar will be worth nothing! Or a yen, which is the same thing.
Taro Aso (TA): I don’t rike the imprication.
Hu Jintao (HJ): I do. We have a couple of trillion of our own, please, Mr Obama. We could dump them too.
BO: You could, eh? So who’s going to buy your plastic underpants and polyester shirts?
FH: Hu is going to buy his own underpants?
BO: I’m asking, not telling. Who’s going to buy your stuff if the dollar goes kaput?
AM: See, Dave, Barack speaks German.
BO: What I mean, Hu, is stop making empty threats. See you at the noodle factory.
TA: I don’t rike any of this. No agreement on Syria seems rikery.
BO: No kidding. Well, this is an economic summit, ain’t it? So we’re economical with agreements.
VP: As the chairman of this conference… What is it, Angela?
AM: I’ve heard a funny one lately. Knock, knock!
DC: Who’s there?
AM: No, it’s not Hu. It’s Angela.
DC: Funny, very. You Germans are known for your sense of humour.
VP: Shut up, Dave, no one listens to you. The meeting is adjourned. Dismisssed!
AM: Himmelherrgott! Take your hand off my knee, you bloody Frosch!
FH: Woo are you calling a frog, you sale boche…
Attached to the transcript was a copy of the joint statement by European Commission President Barroso and European Council President Van ‘Rumpy-Pumpy’ Rompuy:
“The G20 has proven its worth, in the face of the major challenges the global economy has experienced over the last five years, as the world’s premier forum for economic cooperation: all G20 members remain determined to implement our ambitious commitments and take further steps on the way to strong and sustainable growth. We are pleased that the European Union’s objectives for this summit have been broadly achieved.”