By admin 
Introduction
Every night for fifty years, a biological exchange has occurred that would make a CDC inspector faint. When the house lights dim and the “Showman” descends from the stage to the front row, he isn’t just greeting fans; he is entering a high-stakes arena of physical friction and bacterial warfare. It is estimated that Barry Manilow has performed over 6 million handshakes since the mid-1970s—a number so staggering it transcends “fame” and enters the realm of a medical miracle.
Think of the physics involved. Six million times, another human being has gripped, squeezed, pulled, or clawed at the hand that wrote “I Write the Songs.” Each contact is a microscopic collision of heat, sweat, and unpredictable force. We are talking about a hand that has effectively lived in a state of permanent inflammation. Insiders from the 1980s world tours describe a ritual of “post-show recovery” that resembled a surgery prep. His right hand, the one that had to remain agile enough to command a grand piano, was often swollen to twice its size, the skin raw from the sheer volume of human contact.
But the physical toll is only half the scandal. The other half is the psychological terror of the “Great Unwashed.” In an era before hand sanitizer was a household staple, Manilow was a pioneer of the “sterile greeting.” He loved his fans with a ferocity that bordered on the religious, but he feared their germs with a clinical intensity. Every handshake was a gamble with a career-ending flu or a skin infection that could derail a multi-million dollar residency. Behind the scenes, the “Handshake Protocol” was a military-grade operation. There were reports of hidden assistants with industrial-strength antiseptic wipes stationed just out of sight, and a strict rule: No one touches the hand unless the hand touches you first.
Yet, despite the risk of fractured fingers and the relentless assault of pathogens, he never stopped reaching out. Why? Because the “touch” was the currency of the Manilow empire. In a world of distant, cold rock stars, Barry was the man who would actually grab your hand and look you in the eye. That skin-to-skin contact created a loyalty that lasted five decades. Today, that “Golden Hand” is a relic of a lost age of celebrity—a limb that has endured more pressure, more heat, and more human DNA than perhaps any other hand in the history of entertainment. It is a miracle of bone and tendon that hasn’t simply snapped under the weight of six million dreams.