It's a selfie that shook the world — mostly the tabloid and online world. An animated self-portrait ("selfie" in Internet argot) of US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron taken by Denmark's blonde leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt at Nelson Mandela's memorial service on Tuesday titillated the prissy and the prurient across the world, before the photographer who captured the moment said it was no big deal and trashed modern-day obsession with trivialities.

It all began when within minutes after the Mandela memorial service in South Africa, photos surfaced of a grinning Obama and Cameron on either side of Thorning-Schmidt, as she cheerfully took a self-portrait of the trio. The US president's wife, Michelle Obama, was next to Obama, staring ahead stone-facedly on what many saw as a serious occasion.

The government on Friday announced a five-day state mourning as a mark of respect to Nelson Mandela.