Hoodie throws egg at Cameron

LONDON (Reuters) - David Cameron had an egg thrown at him at an election event in Cornwall on Wednesday and later joked it was "the first of the campaign."

Television footage showed a young man wearing a grey hooded top throwing the egg towards the Conservative leader as he left Cornwall College's Saltash campus where he had been talking to students.

A Conservative party spokesman said the egg had brushed Cameron's shoulder.

Cameron, who has been followed on the election trail by a tabloid journalist dressed as a chicken, said afterwards: "Now I know which came first, the chicken not the egg," according to local media reports.

In 2006, Cameron's call for more understanding of why young people commit crime became famously dubbed by his critics as the "hug a hoodie" policy.

In the 2001 election campaign, Labour deputy leader John Prescott famously failed to see the joke when he was struck by an egg thrown by a farmer, immediately responding by punching him on the jaw.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Steve Addison)