Most recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize luxuriate in it — they accept invitations to lunch with the Norwegian king, go to concerts, give press conferences. Not Barack Obama. He's doing the drive-through Nobel experience.

The President, who just signed the guestbook at the Nobel Institute (pictured above) has truncated the usual three days of stuff to just 24 hours, of which he'll presumably spend some time sleeping. Today he will attend a banquet, give a lecture, watch a torchlit procession then bail with excuses about not being able to get breakfast because of 'work' and vague promises to call sometime.

Norwegians think refusing to lunch with their king is rude — or at least 44 per cent of them do, according to a survey. But then they're socialists. Royalists. Socialists. Well some evil, lazy, un-American combination of the two anyway.